At long last we’ve come to the end of this ridiculous adventure—Part VII ended with me walking across the company parking lot for the last time and asking whether this whole ordeal was worth it. (If you missed the rest of this series you can check out the other chapters here.)
At this point I’ve been out of the company for five months and had some time to reflect. My brother’s also found a new job, Stu’s gotten settled in at his, and at least four of my other former coworkers left after I did, giving the company a total annual turnover rate of over 100% depending on how you do the numbers.
I now find myself thinking a lot about an important question: If I had the chance to do things over, would I have taken the job in the first place?
As mind-bending as those last few months at the company were, the first half of my time there was pretty easy, and I made a decent amount of money without a lot of stress. More importantly, though, by standing up for myself and the rest of the team, in a small way I was able to improve conditions over the long term, which I’m not sure anyone else would have tried to do.
My biggest takeaway, though, is that I learned a HELL of a lot about employment law, workplace culture, how to take action when things aren’t right, and how having a backup plan to pay your bills makes it easier to take that action. I pushed myself harder than I ever have and learned what I’m capable of, plus I found out what my limits are.
The main reason I decided to write this series is so readers could learn from my experiences and mistakes, so that if they ever stumble onto sketchy shit going down in their own workplaces they’ll be better equipped to 1)Recognize it, and 2)Take some action, even if that action just means leaving the company or telling someone else.
So in this final section I want to reflect on some other lessons learned and things I’d have done differently…
Why Did the Boss Act the Way He Did?
Despite being a cheerful, outwardly friendly, and companionable person in social situations (all characteristics exhibited by people who commit domestic abuse in private, by the way), the boss seemed to exhibit some classic signs of paranoia. He worried a lot about company security (setting up cameras, making sure doors were always locked, etc.) and often went out of his way to keep visitors from entering the warehouse so they couldn’t see what we were selling. This mistrust carried over to his own employees as well, since he constantly spoke as if they were trying to take advantage of him, one fear being that they would use their sick time to stay home and goof off.
The boss was also careful to maintain an air of secrecy around the company and its business, such as when he took away my ability to see the profit and loss figures in the inventory system. Much of what went on in the company, including the rules about bonuses, overtime, and even meal reimbursements, was never put into writing and often went on behind closed doors so the boss could alter the deals as he wished—an indication of his desire to maintain complete control over company policy. I suspect that this was also partly because he had limited experience running a company and feared that putting things into writing might come back to haunt him if he made a deal he hadn’t quite thought through. In these cases, keeping veto power for himself allowed him a safeguard against his own inexperience.
I also suspect that the boss’s moral compass hadn’t quite developed beyond that of an elementary school-student—his behavior reminded me of when I was a little kid and would try to push my brothers in the yard or take their toys without asking, knowing that if I got caught I could claim the whole thing was a mistake and escape punishment by convincing the adults that I hadn’t really meant to do anything wrong. The boss acted in a similar fashion by always having convenient excuses when we caught him, blaming the company’s unpaid overtime on Daylight Savings Time, lost time records, unsubstantiated exemptions, and lack of approval. The difference is that while I grew up and realized that this childish behavior wasn’t fooling anyone, the boss clung to this defense to escape punishment for his reckless behavior.
Part of the reason the boss was so stingy when it came to offering employee benefits was because he viewed them solely in terms of how they could make him more money—for example, when he offered us paid meals in exchange for staying late, offered to pay for Stu’s job training class if he stayed for at least four years, and dangled bonuses over employees’ heads to make them work harder through the holiday season.
Overall, his lack of real business experience prevented him from seeing that employees who feel safe, secure, and happy at their jobs (for example, because they can take time off when they’re sick and have their health insurance taken care of) will stay with a company longer and ultimately do better work than employees who feel disgruntled and cheated. Case in point: In the past year, no fewer than thirteen employees have left the company, taking with them a lot of valuable experience and requiring the company to train an entirely new workforce several times over.
Also remember: I spent a LOT of time staring out the window in frustration those last few weeks…
Lack of Morals Within a Capitalist Model
The boss also acted visibly nervous about the company’s success, especially during low income periods, since the company gave him the revenue he needed to provide for his family and pay his bills. This led him to respond defensively in situations when he feared losing money so he could make sure he always had a large enough income stream. Of course, I’d argue that providing for your family doesn’t necessarily include living in a ritzy high-priced suburb, buying your wife a Tesla, or taking multiple high-priced vacations per year, so the boss’s high-class tastes only made him more desperate for the money he needed to satisfy them, making it easier for him to adopt less-than-honest measures.
During my first long conversation with the boss he also professed his belief that a company’s sole purpose is to make a profit. For him, making a profit was more important than following laws, treating people fairly, creating a comfortable working atmosphere, or doing good for the greater community, principles of what’s known as stakeholder capitalism.
In most cases, the boss conveniently ignored these things—for example, when one of my coworkers was badly ill but still coming into work and the boss chose not to send him home or consider sick days. The boss seemed to have no moral qualms about this because he wasn’t the one who made my coworker sick, but he couldn’t see how ignoring his employee’s sickness when he clearly had the power to do something about it was a cruel thing to do. It’s the managerial equivalent of a young Spiderman saying “Not my problem” and doing nothing while the bad guy walks right past him.
This lack of moral self-policing in business environments is dangerous, especially when it spreads throughout our business culture. If managers and business owners aren’t able to make sound moral decisions on their own, then the only way to ensure that they treat their employees fairly is to make laws that require them to. This in many ways is the cornerstone of democracy—the majority decides what kind of world they’d like to live in based on their moral values (for example, killing people is wrong), then constructs laws that require people to stay in line with those values (by making laws against killing people).
Since the boss wasn’t able to make sound moral decisions and treat people fairly on his own, the only real way to protect his workers was by making sure he followed the laws—which was why I kept pressing the legal aspects of the overtime issue.
“A Case-by-Case Basis,” or, Everything’s a Deal
Rather than implement set standards for every employee to follow, the boss believed in making deals with individual employees and settling issues case-by-case. The case-by-case basis ensured that he could push employees as far as he could to maximize his own profits: for example, by not paying them overtime when he thought he could get away with it. These lines were often drawn around nationality (i.e., giving the Chinese workers worse deals than the American workers), or based on how he thought the employee would respond (e.g., when he gave Stu a raise after his job interview).
In environments like this, the people who are toughest, strongest, smartest, and the best at making deals are going to come out on top, leaving everyone else to get taken advantage of because there aren’t any rules to protect them. This is especially dangerous for employees who are younger, more timid, less experienced, or who might not know the American labor laws because they came from a different country. Without proper protections, these employees start off at a disadvantage and become easy prey, while a crooked boss who doesn’t believe in laws or morals can grow bolder and stronger at their expense, allowing him to take advantage of even more people.
While a reasonable person would expect skill and experience to play some role in finding success (for example, by studying hard and applying yourself, or by skillfully negotiating for more pay), it’s important to recognize when the deals skew too strongly in favor of the people in power. When everything’s based on a deal, the people on the bottom stand to lose a LOT.
Willful Ignorance of the Law
When I first brought the overtime problem up with the boss he seemed genuinely confused about the American labor laws outlined in the FLSA. His own knowledge of the rules seemed to have mostly come from what he’d observed in his previous job at a large software company, but instead of doing the research or talking to someone who knew for sure, he spoke as if he had a firm grasp on how overtime pay worked, and may even have believed that what he said was true.
This raises a pretty big question: how much leeway should we give companies when it comes to figuring out our complex legal and tax codes? For small businesses of 2-3 people who are just starting out, it seems fine to go easy on them—but the boss employed nearly twenty people at his peak, portrayed the company as being established and fully legal, and aggressively defended his own methods even when I sent him proof that he was wrong.
In the boss’s case, not taking the time to figure out the laws was a case of willful ignorance. The boss had a responsibility as a business owner to do his research about running a business (or to pay someone to do it for him) so that he could follow the laws. When I pointed out that he was breaking those laws, instead of correcting his mistakes he proceeded to tell me I was wrong, then to paint a distorted version of the truth—for example, when he claimed that my marketing coworkers were overtime-exempt just because they’d organized a few marketing campaigns.
Top 6 Things I Would Have Done Differently
I’ve got a few major regrets as to how I handled this situation, so I’ll list them here from mildest to most damaging. A lot of these things involve making sure that the boss’s rules were clearly spelled out instead of blindly trusting him and taking action more quickly, so here are some of my biggest mistakes:
6. Even Considering Buying that Mercedes for a Two Grand Commission
Yeah, that was stupid.
5. Not Talking to the Chinese Warehouse Worker About His Lost Overtime
It would have been easy to pull a coworker aside to translate for me, or ask the warehouse worker a question in simple English and go from there. I shouldn’t have used the excuse that I didn’t know the coworker well enough, and getting the real story would have put me in a WAY better position to confront the boss about the lost overtime.
4. Not Asking About the Company’s Overtime Policy from the Start
When I started my job I wasn’t interested in staying late, so I never asked about the overtime policy for fear that asking would lead to more work. In retrospect, there was zero chance that clarifying the company’s stance toward overtime would have led to my working more hours, and knowing the boss’s rules from the get-go would have raised a red flag and led to my doing some research a lot sooner.
3. Not Clarifying the Boss’s Sick Day Agreement in Writing
When the boss told me on the phone that I was allowed a “reasonable” number of sick days, I should have gotten this in writing, even if it was just in an email or chat message. I also should have asked whether said sick days were actually paid, or just permission to take an unpaid day off. This would have helped me not only gain sick days for myself, but extend the policy to the rest of the office too.
2. Not Telling the Boss About the NH Sick Pay Law for Salaried Employees
I had hard legal proof that companies in the state of New Hampshire aren’t allowed to withhold pay from employees who take time off due to illness, but I waited so long to reveal it that I never got my chance. I should have laid the law clearly on the table as soon as we started talking about sick pay rather than trusting the boss to give us sick pay of his own volition.
1. Waiting to Bring the Overtime Issues to the Boss’s Attention
At every step of the game I should have acted faster, but this was ESPECIALLY true for the overtime problem. Even if the boss had reacted the same way, he still would have known about the laws earlier, and this could well have stopped him from pulling some of the overtime tricks that he went on to pull.
What Did I Learn From All This?
Short answer: A lot. Long answer:
- I learned how overtime laws work, how different kinds of overtime exemptions work, and how trading vacation time for overtime pay DEFINITELY isn’t allowed.
- I learned about labor laws in my home state of New Hampshire, including those governing break periods, salaried workers, and days off.
- I learned about the set difference between W-2 employees and 1099 contractors, how these differences are outlined by the IRS based on actual working conditions, and how the difference isn’t up to companies to decide.
- I learned to always, ALWAYS clarify deals in writing, both for initial working contracts, and for oral deals you make with a boss during a meeting.
- I learned the importance of settling workplace disputes and problems fast before they grow bigger and become part of a company’s routine.
- I got better at confronting authority figures.
- I became less naïve about the business world, and now have a better idea of what to look for and ask about when starting a new job.
Did I Really Make a Difference?
There were times in this whole mess when I was certain my efforts were fruitless and that the boss would ultimately triumph. Though in some ways it was the boss who ultimately won the war, our side scored several key victories for workplace fairness, including:
- Getting rid of Kyle’s 1099 deal so he could be paid as a regular employee.
- Correcting our year-end tax forms that treated employee meal reimbursements as income.
- Phasing out the boss’s illegal deal to have my marketing coworkers work weekends in exchange for extra vacation time instead of overtime.
- Bringing the overtime laws more clearly to the boss’s attention so he’d know where the lines were drawn.
- Talking about our workplace problems with the warehouse manager who could potentially do something about them after I left.
- Giving my coworkers hope that they could do something about their bad situations so that many of them ultimately left (or are planning to leave as I write this).
On a more practical level, one of the first things I did after leaving was to review the company on Glassdoor and encourage my other coworkers to do the same, and the reviews we left now show up on the first page if you search for the company on Google. I also filed some complaints with some of the “outside groups” that the boss didn’t want me talking to—though I’ll leave that part vague in case the boss somehow finds this ;-)
Who knows whether my reports will do any good, but at least the information’s out there.
Speaking of Which, Aren’t You Worried About the Boss Finding This???
No worries, I thought that one through—throughout this series I’ve been careful to avoid mentioning any company trade secrets or aspects of how the company actually ran its business. Instead, I’ve only talked about how the boss treated his workers and which laws he broke, and my sharing this information regarding actual employee issues is protected speech that in no way violates the confidentiality agreement I signed when I was hired, which you can read all about here.
My not mentioning the boss’s name or the company name also adds an extra layer of protection from Google searches. In the unlikely event that he ever finds this I also doubt he’d want to take any action—you know, unless he wanted all of his labor and tax cheating to come to light ;-)
The End
When all was said and done, my friend and my brother and I all got out, along with some of my other coworkers who weren’t being treated well. I learned a lot and have some crazy stories to tell—plus, this series got me through a month’s worth of blog updates ;-)
If nothing else, though, dealing with this was anything but a typical day at work.
If you liked this series, let me know! Shoot me an email at rogers.ian.m@gmail.com, leave a comment below, or otherwise hit me up!
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