At the beginning of the year all of us employees (13 of us) took a voluntary pay cut to help our owners keep the doors open on our little plumbing supply company. You see the Old man who ran the place died at the end of last year and his kids took over. By years end our little company was in turmoil as the college educated heirs didn’t know a thing about actually running a plumbing supply company. Out of respect for their deceased father, we all took a pay cut so the company could survive on the promise that when the ship was righted we would all get a 5 figure bonus which would more than cover the pay cut we took. After this bonus we were to get our regular wages back plus ten percent on top of it.
Well after the latest quarterly report came out, we had actually turned a hefty profit as a company for the first time since the old man’s passing. Finally we would get our bonuses!
We all received an inter-office memo to meet in the conference room. We knew what this was about and were ready to celebrate our combined success!
The absolute nerve of these college educated a-holes! They said since we were raking in record profits that they didn’t want to rock the boat and put the company in a financial bind by shelling out for bonuses or to reactivate our former wage statuses, let alone a 10% increase in pay on top of it. So they LITERALLY got us pizza and soda as a “thank you”.
Myself and 6 others walked out right then and there. You cannot treat people like they did and expect things to be okay! Between the 7 of us, there was over 80 years of experience working for their father’s company. Let them see how hard it will be to replace our knowledge and experience. Maybe they didn’t learn in college manners or how to treat employees as family. Maybe they will think a second and third time in the future before doing something like this again.
Meanwhile, 3 of my fellow co-workers who quit and myself, will be starting our own plumbing supply company and we have every confidence that we will succeed. We’ll start off small and there will be lean times, but there is nothing on earth that will shake our integrity and treat people like our former employers did.
Credits – Respective Author