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Woman Fired For Not Being 'Team Player' After Expecting To Be Paid For Overtime

Published November 26, 2021

One thing people tend to learn quickly when they enter the workforce is that if you don't look out for yourself, you're not likely to find many others who will either.

This philosophy has a lot to do with why we're seeing so many workers quit their jobs in droves nowadays, but it's also been at the heart of individual cases where employees were taken advantage of.

But of course, we can often find that looking after ourselves is easier said than done and it can be surprisingly easy to feel guilty about turning down an unreasonable request. Yet as one woman learned after sharing her story, that changes a lot when the consequences of doing so aren't just harsh, but illegal.

After about a year of struggling to find a job after college, one woman in Australia lucked into what seemed like a perfect opportunity.

Paramount Pictures via YouTube

As she explained in a Reddit post, this involved a company that apparently specializes in coaching people to work less while still earning more money. As her story goes on, this will become quite ironic.

When she started the job, she was told that she would receive an hourly rate for three months until she received a contract for a salaried position with superannuation (similar to a pension) and other benefits.

However, when that period elapsed, the woman's boss told her that she would have to remain at an hourly wage due to the company's financial troubles.

But despite the fact that the woman's boss made this decision, she also chastised her for "doing the bare minimum."

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By that, she meant that "clocking in on time and leaving on time is simply not enough."

Soon after the woman heard this, she caught wind that her company was hosting a three-day event that was both fully catered and livestreamed by professionals who reportedly made about $4,000 each.

When the woman was asked to cover this event on the company's social media profile and take some pictures, she initially saw it as an opportunity to prove she could work hard.

However, the woman eventually learned that her company was also expecting her to cover the gala held after the event's third day.

Walt Disney Pictures via YouTube

In the woman's words, "That means on the last day I would work from 8am till midnight and half of that day would be 100% unpaid."

And when she asked if she could either bill those hours or take them off in the following week, her boss became upset and told her she wasn't being a team player. The woman was then fired and told she wouldn't be paid for the extra work she had already done that day.

This came as crushing news to the woman, who previously felt she had found a secure opportunity with good pay.

She then said, "My parents seem to think that I should’ve just worked for free" but the response from the Reddit community she contacted was just horror at her boss's actions.

In the words of one user, "Your former boss sounds like a con artist. If she had the money to pay for catering and live streaming the gala, she had money to pay you. It sounds like this job was the opposite of what they advertised: you worked more and earned less."

Another stressed that in Australia, it's actually against the law to deny an employee superannuation.

As they put it, "This is serious and you should definitely contact the federal fair work ombudsman about wage theft and super theft."

I guess we'll see if the boss' lawyer is also a "team player."

h/t: Reddit | No-Transportation998

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