Employee exposes boss' ulterior motive behind pressuring colleagues into contributing to charity

Donating to charities is a good thing to do. It allows for individuals who are not privileged to gain opportunities to improve their living standards in some way. With that being said, many individuals use the guise of charity for their own selfish gains. Reddit user u/Between_my_ears had such a story to share about their boss who forced them to give away their hard-earned money for charity so she could gain a bonus. The elaborate post has garnered 2.8K upvotes within a day of being posted on the site.

The individual details that the company they worked for had a huge fund-raising campaign every year. The company would often take money directly from an employee's paycheck before taxes to contribute to a cause. They write, "You are encouraged and VERY HEAVILY pressured to donate to preselected charities of their choice in smaller amounts per month for the year or one lump sum." They talk about how the organization would frequently send out email reminders and put up signs everywhere. 

The organization meticulously kept track of how much each department was contributing, as they wanted 100% participation from all of them. On the face of it, everything seemed voluntary, but the individual came to know that that was not the case. In case people did not want to contribute, they were approached by a higher-up and often forced to partake in donating to the charity. The individual's administrator at the time, who they describe to be "stoic and stern," started showing a lot of enthusiasm for the charity campaign.

They write, "It was weird and raised alarms." The individual happened to be struggling quite a bit during a certain year and did not want to contribute. Their administrative lady came in and gleefully shared that they were almost at "100% participation." Her visit was basically to persuade the individual to contribute because she went around asking everybody if they participated. As predicted, the lady soon asked the individual whether they had made a contribution. The individual tried to evade by saying that they were still deciding which charity they should donate to. They write, "She pulls a chair over to my desk with a sob story from one of the charities and how the money helps those in need." The woman then went to the extent of making the individual open the site on their computer and forced them to make a small contribution of $24 a year to a certain charity.

The admin lady repeated the same process the following year. They say, "I soon became her target to get rid of." She separated the individual from the people they got along with and even made them directly report to her instead of their direct boss. The individual sensed that if they continued to work in the same department, they would lose their job soon. The individual managed to apply for another position and shifted jobs. They write, "It ended up being an amazing and one of my favorite positions to date." The new department they joined happened to manage multiple events for the charity that the company had. They happened to tell their new coworkers about their previous administrator, who was weirdly insistent on them contributing to charity.

Their coworkers revealed that administrators from any department would get a bonus if they ensured 100% participation. Upon knowing this, the individual began telling everyone else in their previous department about the bonus. Their efforts proved to be fruitful as the department had one of the lowest participation efforts in the next year. The individual mentions that since they were in a better place with the new department, they voluntarily made contributions to charity, as the new administrator would treat everyone with the bonus they got.

Reddit users loved the individual's tactful response to the greedy administrator and shared their thoughts in the comments section. u/otacon444 said, "This shouldn't be legal at all." u/HistoricalPapaya7070 said, "Never contribute to what is nothing more than a corporate scam."