Staff Calls In Sick After Boss Demands They Work Unpaid Overtime To 'Be A Team Player'
When people remember they outnumber those in charge, they tend to win.
TetianaKtv | Shutterstock Jobs may come and go, but bosses' audacity is eternal, and we seem to be in a golden age of managerial gall. A worker's recent Reddit post is a perfect example: His boss asked the entire team to work tons of extra hours, all because of management's own mistake.
But rather than swallow it and grumble, this staff did the thing we should all start doing a lot more of. They banded together and fought back. Because as they all quickly learned, it usually works.
The staff called in sick after their boss asked them to work overtime for free 'to be a team player.'
Let's be real: Nobody is at their job out of the goodness of their heart, and even those who love their jobs would never show up again if the paycheck were taken away. That's literally WHY there's a paycheck in the first place.
Monkey Business Images | Shutterstock
So when the worker's manager called a "mandatory team meeting" one afternoon to insist everyone work late all week to help deal with an urgent situation, the staff understandably had one question: Will we be paid overtime?
Of course, if you even have to ask in the first place, you already know the answer, and sure enough, it was a hard no, and an outright offensive one at that. "He actually laughed and said 'This is what being a team player looks like,'" the worker wrote in his Reddit post. "'It's what separates the people who grow with this company from those who don't.'"
Now this staff are all better people than me because I would have stood up right then and there and launched a torrent of profanity that would have gotten me fired on the spot. Instead, they chose to get even, but in a way that sent a crystal-clear message.
The staff banded together and called in sick the next day to show their boss their value.
The request was absurd on its face, but making matters even worse was that it was all due to a crisis that was management's own fault. They needed everyone to stay late every night for a week to meet a pressing deadline management had known was looming for months.
But it got worse from there. When someone pointed out the obvious — that forcing people to work off the clock for free is quite literally illegal — the manager doubled down. "'Nobody's forcing you to do anything,'" he said. "'We're just strongly encouraging your participation in the team's success.'" Okay, well, I strongly encourage you to either pay me or [redacted] these [redacted].
Anyway, for a huge swathe of the team, it was the last straw. "Half the department (including me) called out 'sick' today," the worker wrote, which of course sent the boss into a tizzy. "Manager is freaking out in the group chat about 'lack of commitment' while the rest of us are sharing memes in our separate chat."
The STAFF has a "lack of commitment"?! You're the one who won't pay them for the TEN EXTRA HOURS OF WORK you've asked for, buddy!
This is a perfect example of what happens when people assert their collective power.
Everywhere you turn these days, there are people insisting that all is lost, everything is hopeless, America is "cooked," and we're all "doomed." And then, like clockwork, a week or two goes by, and there's a new story of how, when people actually recognize they have power, organize, and assert it, they win.
Prime example: Just weeks ago, American consumers, from all across the political spectrum, brought Disney to its knees when it capitulated to the current administration's FCC-led removal of Jimmy Kimmel from the airwaves for on-air comments, a clear violation of the First Amendment prohibitions against the government interfering with free speech.
It took just 24 hours of boycotts of Disney and its subsidiaries and cancellations of Disney vacations by self-proclaimed Disney Adults for the megacorporation to lose nearly $4 billion in value, and suddenly, the following morning, the FCC was walking back its overreach, and Kimmel was in talks to be back on the air by the following week.
Similarly, this staff's management backed right down when they all called in sick. Why? As the worker put it, "[it's] amazing how a deadline that was 'absolutely critical to the company's future' suddenly became something they could 'rework the timeline on' when enough people refused to be exploited."
These two situations don't seem to have much in common, of course, except for the throughline they share: There are more of us than there are of them, and when we actually let them know in ways that hurt instead of panicking or throwing up our hands in exasperation, they get the message very, very quickly. As the Redditor put it, "Know your worth, folks," and that goes just as much for the government you're unhappy with as it does your employer. We outnumber them. Get up and start acting like it.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
