I was working for a small tech company that created and sold its own software to a niche market. Nothing extraordinary about that. We had a main client with eighty different locations. The people in these locations were not tech-savvy, and the software front-end was pretty simple as a result.
At the start of each day, the locations had to “start the day,” which basically involved entering the date and some opening figures. The client wanted this to be a manual process, even though it was basically entering the figures from the “end the day.”
There was one person who was on call for the support phone, and he had been doing so for about two years. Personally, I thought he was crazy for agreeing to be on call for such a length of time. What I didn’t know was that he didn’t get paid any extra for this. He was getting calls at all sorts of crazy hours over this time. He was having some disagreement with the manager, and one day just walked out after having had enough.
The manager then calls me in and says he needs somebody to take over tech support while they find a new person. The manager was a bit of a pompous fool who disliked the people of the country he had moved to and thought us all idiots. Anyway, he agreed to pay me the other guy’s salary on top of my own while I did both jobs.
We were the idiots, not him, don’t forget. I didn’t exactly trick him, but I didn’t tell him the mistake he was making either, and got him to send it in an email and have it agreed.
Part of the duty was to have a 24-hour phone, but as I was getting double pay, that didn’t bother me at first. The agreement with the client was that if they called the number and it was not a software issue but a problem between the chair and the PC, they would be charged €2k for the call, and the person answering would get €300.
So from my point of view, I was getting double pay and €300 bonus pay, maybe, but the phone shouldn’t ring as I knew the work we were doing and there weren’t emergency software fixes happening.
There were no calls in the first week, but in the second week, I got a call from Bob in a particular location at 5 AM.
Bob: “I can’t open the day!”
So, I dial in and see he simply hadn’t done anything, and walk him through the steps on how to do it.
I have been on site in this location before for about two months; the instructions are literally taped to the wall above the monitor. I know Bob pretty well, and he is not the brightest. So, I just verified the instructions are still on the wall and said he should just follow the instructions, and as I didn’t want to get him in trouble with the charge, I wouldn’t put the call down as chargeable.
I tell my manager when I go in what happened.
Manager: “Good boy, it didn’t take you long anyway.”
Me: “If it happens again, I’ll warn Bob before I look and will charge.”
My manager gives me a bit of a weird look, but I ignore it. The next day, at 5 AM, Bob rings again.
Me: “If this is the same issue as yesterday, there’ll be a charge.”
Bob: “No, it’s not, it’s a real bug!”
I dial in and look… he hasn’t done anything. I do the standard actions, and there are no issues.
Bob: “You must be doing something different.”
I go in and tell the manager what happened and that this is chargeable.
Manager: “I’ll look after it.”
So, great, an extra €300 in my paycheck.
The next day, Bob rings at 5 AM again.
Me: “Bob, if this is the same issue, it’s chargeable.”
Same issue again. I tell my manager that it’s another €300 for being woken up. This continues until Sunday.
Monday morning comes around, and there’s no 5 AM call, so I think they were warned by billing, and I’m glad not to be woken again.
Monday night at 11 PM, I get a call from Bob.
Bob: “I can’t get close of day to work!”
I have a look, and he has done nothing. I can see he hasn’t even logged into the PC, as with the other times. I go to bed at least knowing I won’t get a call, as Bob won’t be working the morning shift.
At 5 AM, I get a call from John in a different location.
John: “I can’t open the day!”
5:15 AM, Ted calls.
Ted: “Same problem here!”
5:30 AM, it’s Fred.
Fred: “Yeah, can’t open the day either!”
All the same issue; no attempts to even log in. I’m wide awake now and wondering what has just happened. I look up the area, and these locations are all in one region run by one regional manager.
I told my manager about the issue.
Manager: “You’re starting to sound like the other guy who walked out. You’re 24-hour support — what did you expect would happen?”
I try to explain that it’s 24-hour EMERGENCY support and that the company has run up an €8k bill in 24 hours, and he laughs.
Manager: “We don’t charge for the calls!”
I go back to the email agreement he sent and check; we ARE meant to charge, and I’m meant to get €300 per such call. I try to talk to the manager, but he doesn’t want to listen. The calls keep happening for open and close, so I can’t get a full night’s sleep. I contacted the guy who left.
Former Tech: “The manager never charged nor paid the bonus. I lived like that for two years before finally cracking up and quitting.”
I put up with it for the remainder of the month. I get my paycheck and am only paid marginally more than normal — the difference between my wage and the guy who quit.
I go to the accountant/HR guy (small company) and show him the email and fill in the bonus documents, which I had the manager sign off.
Accountant: “There’s no way you should be getting so much money!”
Me: “It’s all agreed and signed by the manager.”
He agrees it’s all above board, but the manager had obviously made a mistake. I point out that I was working overtime doing both jobs, along with the out-of-hours calls. The manager is called in, and he agrees my wage should be doubled, but not the bonus payment, since they didn’t charge the client.
Accountant: “Then why aren’t they being charged?”
They start arguing with each other, ignoring me and getting very shouty.
I leave them to it and contact the regional manager of the client to just ask why all their managers are calling the emergency line for such basic stuff.
Regional Manager: “I told them to because they pay for support.”
As he is the client, I am polite and say nothing to him about how wrong he is.
I go back to my manager to find him still fighting with the accountant. I explain why we are getting so many calls. My manager talks to the client and comes back saying there will be investigations.
So, Bob was always running late, and what he would do was ring from home to have the software started so he didn’t have to be there, and other people had keys to open up. There had been a regional meeting at some point, and he told the other managers his secret, including closing up quickly and getting us to close up the software so he could call from his car on the way home.
Bob was brighter than I thought.
My manager gets bawled out for the hours he had the other guy work, then for the ridiculous payment he agreed with me, and for not charging the client. They come back to me and tell me they would like to renegotiate wages.
Me: “I didn’t want the phone in the first place, and I only agreed to have it while you filled the role.”
My manager had told them he had replaced him with me, and it was now part of my job, so he had saved money for a minor pay rise.
This is all taking time. I am in my second month of double pay, and I have had more calls for non-emergency issues, including somebody having caps lock on when entering their password.
The paycheck comes in, and I have extra money, but only the extra money for the first month without the bonuses. I go to see my manager and the accountant again.
Me: “What’s going on?”
Manager: “We negotiated a different deal with you.”
Me: “Show me it, and my signature.”
They had put together an agreement, but never showed it to me or had me agree. They realise they have made another mistake and ask me to sign it there and then without fully reading it.
Me: “I’ll review it.”
They keep insisting I sign it without reading it fully. I refuse, and they get really mad, threatening to fire me.
In my country, you can’t fire somebody easily due to a raft of laws. There are also a host of laws on working hours. They were currently breaking these laws by having me on call and then coming in on time after getting a call at 5 AM.
I leave and go read the proposal. They were trying to get me to do both jobs for a very small pay rise, remove the bonus, and wanted me to be on call 24/7, which included a no-drinking clause and must be thirty minutes away from my laptop at any given time.
H*** no.
I walk back.
Me: “No to the agreement. I’d like all payments addressed by the end of the week as per the agreement I did sign, including the bonus payments, €6k by now.”
They get really mad and threaten to fire me. I give them the highlighted legislation showing they had made me work over seventy hours a week for two months, refused to honour my contract, and had no grounds to fire me.
The manager then uses a racial slur, but as the accountant and I are of the same nationality, hearing it said in anger makes him flip out. They start yelling at each other.
I wait until they calm down.
Me: “It’s very difficult to fire me now, given what the manager just said. Are you going to deny he said that?”
The accountant looks at me and says nothing. I am furious and leave. I walk into the managing director’s office. The office is close to the others, so he’s heard the shouting.
Me: “Can we talk?”
He plays cute by pretending he doesn’t know there’s an issue with anything. I explain everything and top it off with the racial slur. The managing director is confident until that point.
As said, the pompous manager is from another country. I am Irish in Ireland. My manager was a former British Air Force something or other who would say things like “What, what” and “Tally-ho.” He moved to Ireland for this job as part of some strange deal; his former employer bought our software shortly before he left and joined our company.
I basically say I will not return to the office with the manager there.
Me: “He will have to give me a written apology before I will. If they do not sort out the money as agreed, I will file a case against them in the labour courts, where I would easily win based on the hours worked. Having racial abuse from the Englishman in an Irish Labour Court would work so definitively against them, and if he testified, he’d only make it worse.”
No surprise, the manager refuses to write an apology but has the gall to ring me to apologise, saying it would be much better and “personal” over the phone.
I let him say his piece, which is less an apology and more an explanation of how I should not be so sensitive; all recorded.
Me: “I don’t care what you think. You have to give me a written apology if I am to return. Your call.”
After lots of talk back and forth with the managing director, I made it clear:
Me: “I want all money paid and a written apology from the manager, or he be fired. I won’t return until this is addressed.”
They need me back as my work is building up. About a week passes, and they ask me to come back in as the manager has been fired.
I return; they give me a cheque for the money owed and say everything is okay. I don’t trust them, but it all appears above board, even though I know they’ll want to get rid of me the first chance they get.
I start working, and as I do various parts of my system admin, I can see that my ex-manager is still on the network. I see what he’s accessing, and it is quite apparent he’s working on a tender from the company, i.e., not fired. I laugh to myself.
As we are a small company, the phones are redirected from the reception to other phones. You can do this from your desk to your own phone. I redirect the reception phone to my desk when I see the managing director heading out of the office and kick the manager off the network because I’ve been told he doesn’t work there.
Five minutes later, my phone rings.
Manager: “I can’t connect to the network! I’m working on something very important!”
The guy is so ignorant, he doesn’t even notice it’s me who answered.
Me: “I kicked you off the network because you don’t work here.”
Manager: “I do work there.”
Me: “Not what the managing director told me, because you were so pathetic that you couldn’t write an apology, he told me they fired you.”
Manager: “Stop being ridiculous. They obviously told you that and have me working from home now.”
Me: “Well, somebody is lying. and I hope it is you.”
Manager: “Nobody is lying.”
Me: “So you are both fired, and still working for the company?”
Manager: “Listen, Paddy, put me through to [Managing Director].”
My name is not Paddy, so this is a racial slur, depending on how you say it.
Me: “Another racial slur, seems like you need to write me two apologies now.”
Manager: “Stop being such a [string of slurs]!”
Me: “I am hanging up now, but I will surely use this recording as proof of your abusive behaviour.”
I rang the managing director on his mobile to say that the manager was somehow still on our system, and then he rang me and was abusive to me again. I ask if I should contact the police, as he seems to be unhinged, insisting that he still works there. [Managing Director] asks me to let him back on to the network.
Me: “No problem, I am going home now and will see you in the labour court, and I now have a recording of the manager racially insulting me. I also have a chain of emails where you said he was fired because of it, yet on my first day back, I received the same abuse.”
While I was off, I found out I could get double my salary by becoming an independent consultant. I had a contract lined up to start in four weeks.
I get a call from the managing director asking to meet me, I agree to meet him in a coffee shop. He tries to apologise for lying, but thought it was a good solution to have the manager no longer be in the office, as we would never see each other.
I disagreed and asked what his solution was now. He goes on about how I would never see or talk to the manager again.
I didn’t agree and said they could make me redundant and give me a generous severance package. Eventually, that was agreed upon, and I was going to finish up in two weeks’ time after handing over my workload.
I got a year’s salary and had a job lined up, so I was happy. There was a gentleman’s agreement that I wouldn’t go to court, which I did abide by. If I really wanted to, I could have gone to court and gotten more, most likely.
