We all just want to receive fair compensation from our employers, right? And it makes sense for employers to consider that, because when workers aren’t treated fairly, it can backfire in ways they can’t even imagine.
For example, we have an overworked and undervalued IT worker who shared his story of corporate ineptitude on the r/antiwork subreddit.
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After asking for a well-deserved raise and receiving an insulting offer in return, the worker moved on to greener pastures. Shortly after, the company’s gamble wound up costing them around $40 million.
OP took a contract job for $29k/year.
He moved to a small town that didn’t have much in terms of IT workers. At the time, he had one full-time co-worker who did the same job for $93k a year. Soon enough, both IT workers were supporting three factories.
Three years later, not much had changed.
OP was hired on at $31k a year while his coworker continued to make $93k.
“Around this same time of getting extra workload and getting hired full-time, my boss retired, my co-worker got promoted to the regional manager and turned into my new boss,” explains OP.
OP worked very hard.
He writes that he worked 16-hour days, 7 days a week, with no weekends off, no holidays off, and an on-call schedule that had him glued to his phone 24/7.
“This went on for a little over a year, and I told my boss I needed my salary to match his old salary,” wrote OP.
Seems like a reasonable request.
If you know that someone working your same job was making three times as much, it stands to reason that you might ask for a raise, right?
Well, OP was offered a raise: a raise of $800 over the course of a year, or $66 extra per month, or fifteen bucks extra per week.
Keep in mind that this is a multinational company that makes billions in profit every year.
After receiving the insulting offer, OP found another job with better salary and a reduced workload. He gave his two-week notice, and in those two weeks he was written up for insubordination. Basically, his employer decided to burn every possible bridge.
“The way these IT systems were set up required 100% uptime.”
This is important. On OP’s last day of work, the boss was in Costa Rica. OP turned in his company computer and phone, meaning he was completely done.
The stars aligned at this time: the company found themselves without an IT guy when their systems went down.
The outages cost the company $218,000 per minute until connectivity is restored.
Of course, the company begged OP to come in and fix things. But OP had already quit, and it was no longer his problem.
“Incredibly unlucky timing for my previous employer,” he wrote. “I sat awake in bed for hours just watching my phone and email blow up in the middle of the night and I don’t think I’ve ever laughed so hard in my life. It was the most glorious karma I could have ever asked for.”
The final tally? Around $40 million.
OP gave more details on exactly how this outage cost the company, but the end result is the same: the worst possible thing happened to the company at the worst possible time, and they’d burned too many bridges to get help in time.
OP gives even more info on his employer in a follow-up post.
It’s a satisfying read.
Some of us are willing to go above and beyond for our employer, but generally only if we’re treated well as employees.
When companies treat their workers like garbage, they shouldn’t be surprised when those workers aren’t loyal.
Make sure to share your thoughts in the comments!
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