Employee fired for not working overtime without pay pulls the rug from under his boss in ultimate payback

People at work often say, "We're family," but act like total strangers when you try to stand up for your rights! A person working at a marketing firm realized it when they were fired for refusing to work off the clock. They (u/mpete1310) posted the incident on Reddit on November 16, where several users gathered to praise their retaliation.

The person had been working in the marketing firm for 8 months and had realized the manager loved promoting "we're a family" whenever she needed free labor. Once, she asked the author to finish a presentation after their shift. "I said no. She hit me with 'I thought we were a team,' and how it's 'important for the company.' I told her if it's that important, pay me overtime," they recounted. The manager looked shocked; in fact, she accused the employee of not being a team player and being difficult to handle. "When I was your age, I stayed late all the time to prove myself," the senior justified herself. The person had reached their threshold and immediately responded with, "That's why you're still here and I'm planning my exit strategy." The manager heard them speak and was quite shocked by the confession. The whole week, she remained distant from the employee, and on a Friday, HR called the employee for a meeting. "They're 'letting me go' for 'cultural fit issues,'" they said. The employee announced, "I'm filing for unemployment and never looking back. F*** corporate America and its manipulation tactics."

The employee was fired without any decent reason or warning. Sadly, this happens more often than not. In fact, a survey of 1,849 adults in the U.S. workforce by the National Employment Law Project (NELP) and YouGov documents found that a majority of people were fired unfairly. They found that over two out of three workers who have been terminated received either no reason or an unfair reason for getting fired. Meanwhile, reacting to the Reddit post, u/dungeonmat commented, "That 'we're a family' line is such a red flag; real families don't fire you for having boundaries. Good riddance, honestly; you dodged a bullet long-term." u/sesoru said, "I would contact the labor board and say you got fired for retaliation and that they are trying to wage-theft workers; that's a huge deal in a lot of states and messed up."

u/d-laz recalled, "I had been working a job for 5 years and was training a guy fresh out of school. He mentioned that he got a raise because our job code had a minimum payment and he was under that. I asked how much, and it was $0.06 less than what I made. I asked for a raise, and within a few weeks my manager got together with my supervisor and HR to interview my coworkers on my code of conduct violations. Coworkers didn't say anything and were told to not tell me, which was also against policy.  They did end up writing me up for some BS, and I quit a week later.  After she wrote me up, she goes, 'We would normally fire someone for doing this; we have a zero tolerance policy, but you are a hard worker, so we will just give you a final written warning.' F**k her; she just wanted to use that write-up to justify lower performance evaluations moving forward."

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