Worker Asks What To Do After Discovering His Job Posted Online For $10 More An Hour — 'Someone's Getting Fired Or Promoted'
If his boss was trying to hide it, he did a very bad job — but it turned out there was more to the story.
nortonrsx / Getty Images / Canva Pro With the way so many employers seem to be running things nowadays, it probably shouldn't be surprising when they make major errors.
Still, the situation a worker on Reddit discovered takes the cake when it comes to incompetence — and also leaves him in quite a quandary about the future of his job.
He found his job posted online for more pay and is wondering what to do about it.
The transient nature of so many jobs these days means the gainfully employed are often trawling online job listings just as much as the unemployed are. So, it's not exactly hard for workers to stumble across their own positions posted on the job boards.
But this Redditor wasn't even looking. He was instead blind-sided when an applicant for the job called into the office.
"We use Teams to communicate with the whole firm," he wrote in his since-deleted Reddit post. "Our receptionist sent the entire office a message saying 'I have [someone] on the phone calling about the [position] job posting? Who should I direct them to?'"
Oops. Sounds like a certain receptionist is going to be getting a bit of a talking-to pretty soon. In any case, the Redditor did what anyone else would do in this situation — immediately hit the internet to verify, and sure enough, there it was.
Not only did he find his job posted, but it was listed for $10 more per hour than he is currently being paid.
"I imagine they probably didn’t want us all to know someone is either getting promoted or fired," the worker wrote. But that horse is definitely out of the barn now.
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Even more galling is the pay rate they are currently offering. "They apparently posted three days ago looking to hire for my position at $20-$28 an hour when they hired me at $14-$18 an hour," the worker wrote.
He noted that there are only six desks in their department, and all of them are full — which means someone is likely getting replaced, either because of a promotion or a dreaded layoff. But situations like this can actually be an opportunity.
Experts say that if this happens to you, you should use it as leverage — but only if you're certain it's actually your job.
Incidents like this are becoming more common as more and more states adopt laws requiring salary transparency in job listings.
A New York woman went viral last year after detailing her experience with how these legal changes manifested at her job. She found her position posted for a staggering $90,000 more a year than she was being paid.
Experts say when this happens, it's important to first make sure you have all the details — starting with being absolutely certain the job posted is even yours. Many job descriptions sound similar, and many companies end up hiring more than one person to do the same thing.
These redundancies can also lead to different salaries for legitimate reasons, according to Ruth Thomas, a pay equity strategist at compensation management firm Payscale. One version of your job may serve five regions while you only serve two, for example.
Once you're armed with the facts, though, experts agree that you should use the job posting as leverage. If you're a contractor, apply to the position and pitch yourself by highlighting the value you bring to the company.
If it doesn't seem like you're being replaced and rather the posting is for, say, a second person to do a similar job to yours, use the posting as an opportunity to ask for a raise now that the cat's out of the bag.
And of course, if you do your due diligence and it does seem like you're about to get the boot? Well, consider it a heads-up to start pounding the pavement for a new job before the rug is pulled out from under you.
However, job listings often turn out to be fake posts from scam sites — and it turned out that this one was, too.
There's one final factor to consider if this happens to you. There are tons of scam sites that post fake job openings using easily Googleable details to dupe applicants into forking over their information.
"Are you sure that your employer actually posted this?" one Redditor asked this man. "$20-$28 is the most common range posted that gets shown for Google search results from those fake job posting websites like Geebo."
Geebo is among the most notorious of these scam sites, and sure enough: "I might be safe then," the man wrote in response, "I just looked again, and it was literally posted on Geebo, lol."
So, if this happens to you, perhaps step one is: Don't panic. In the best-case scenario, you get a hefty raise. In the second-best scenario, the whole thing's fake, and you have nothing to worry about.
John Sundholm is a news and entertainment writer who covers pop culture, social justice, and human interest topics.