My boss told me I’m “not a good human” when I asked to be paid for my time [Ask A Manager]

**[Original](https://www.askamanager.org/2021/03/my-boss-told-me-im-not-a-good-human-when-i-asked-to-be-paid-for-my-time.html):**
[2021-03-01]

A reader writes:

I work for a professional firm that has a long history of devaluing non-partner contributions. Let’s just say we have problems:


- The pay structure for employees is all risk and no reward. Salaries are artificially low, below market, supposedly because of our bonus structure.
- If clients don’t pay, that comes out of our pay (bonus), and we get a lecture about how it’s a business and we are only worth what we bring in.
- If clients pay, we are given a lecture about how we are not partners so we don’t deserve to share in the reward. It’s a lose-lose.
- Predictably, there has been 120% turnover in my three years at the firm. Twice in the last five years, the entire staff has quit en masse.
- I have not received even a $1 cost of living increase since I’ve been here. As a matter of principle, the firm does not give base pay raises, ever, supposedly because you can “earn” more each year by working harder and bringing in more profit for the firm.
- When the pandemic happened, the firm cut 20% of professional employees, and also cut remaining employee pay. A few months later, the fear wore off and we realized that our hours/collectibles were actually up and started questioning why we were earning less for working more and bringing in more. We were told that things are “complicated” and there are things we just “don’t understand.” (Notably, all partners are men and all employees are women.)
- We also noticed that our firm received massive PPP “loans,” and that same week every partner announced a long vacation. Again, we were told we just “don’t understand.”

Fast forward to January, when the firm excitedly announced that they would be “helping” me and another completely overworked employee by hiring a new employee for us to train. The time spent training the new employee would come out of our bonuses, but we were told that this would benefit us in the long run because we would not be overworked next year. (We do not share in profits from this new employee.) What a treat!

I decided to raise this with the managing partner, and asked that they take our non-billable time into account this year for bonuses. It did not go well. Understatement.

His immediate response was that I’m “not a good human” and “selfish” because so many people have helped me learn my job, and so how dare I not be willing to help everyone else. (I never said I wouldn’t help — I just asked that I be compensated for my time.). He told me I’m being “short sighted” for complaining about reduced pay this year and not thinking about the supposed long-term benefits for me (not being overworked next year). He told me at least three times that he’s “disappointed” in me, which, okay whatever.

I mean, I’m not the crazy one here, right?

Read Allison’s response [here](https://www.askamanager.org/2021/03/my-boss-told-me-im-not-a-good-human-when-i-asked-to-be-paid-for-my-time.html)

**[First Update](https://www.askamanager.org/2021/03/my-boss-told-me-im-not-a-good-human-when-i-asked-to-be-paid-for-my-time.html):**
[2021-12-30]

I’m somewhat embarrassed to say…I’m still at the same firm for the time being. But, as is usually the case, it’s a longer story.

New employee turned out to be…a lost cause. (In fairness to the new employee, being hired in pandemic, with everyone working from home, in a new field, is a tough row to hoe – although I don’t think it would have mattered in this case because the new employee was not well suited to the position.)

I pretty quickly realized that the new employee was not going to make it, so after I was told that I would not be compensated for training them (and after my spouse gave me the green light to quit/lose my job), I decided to be “selfish” and just check out. New employee was let go a few weeks later.

Shortly after this, I found out that a rival firm I’ve always had on my “short list” was hiring, so I reached out and had an interview the next day. But, it was not what I expected! During the interview (which was more of a feeling out of “would this be a good fit” for both sides), I realized that I would have far less autonomy than I have at my current firm. (It turns out, clueless and out of touch managers sometimes have an upside? Not a lot of oversight.) I walked away thinking “not now, but maybe in the future” and I think they did too. (I’m too junior for them to give autonomy too right now, but I’m too senior for me not to want/need autonomy right now, if that makes sense.)

Around this time, my spouse and I started IVF. Which, as those who have done IVF know, is absurdly time consuming. You basically have to work part-time for 2-3 weeks at a time, and you have no control over the schedule. So, it came in handy that I had a ton of autonomy. It also meant that my hours would be horrible this year no matter what. So, I just focused on our family, and decided not to worry about my compensation this year.

There was also a change at my firm. A fresh start of sorts (but without any real change), and I’ve always been a sucker for a fresh start. That changed the mood. Will it last? No. It’s like throwing a fresh coat of paint over rotting wood. But, at this exact moment, I can honestly say that I’m not miserable. This company is not my “forever home,” for sure. I have no future here, and I don’t think they would ever consider a woman partner, not do I think I would ever want to be in business with these dudes. But, right now, I’d be content to stay while we try to expand our family (fingers crossed), and then consider my next moves.

I really appreciated the comments and the support from you and the AAM community. Honestly, I was really shaken by boss’s reaction and comments. It was very cutting and (although it feels unprofessional to admit) it hurt my feelings. I walked away from the conversation feeling like I had done something wrong by trying to discuss my compensation with my boss. Intellectually, I knew I hadn’t. But the part of me that wants to achieve and doesn’t want to “disappoint” was a little wounded. I needed the reassurance that I wasn’t “out of line” for raising compensation and just to hear that, you know, my boss is an a-hole.

**[Second Update](https://www.askamanager.org/2023/06/update-my-boss-told-me-im-not-a-good-human-when-i-asked-to-be-paid-for-my-time-2.html):**
[2023-06-12]

As I mentioned, I stuck around working for these miserable people because my husband and I were trying to have a baby. Those efforts were successful, and we had a healthy child. Yay!

My job offered paid parental leave, which I took. It wasn’t particularly generous, but better than $0 (and not optional – I tried to opt out bc I very much knew there was no “free lunch” with these people, and they were the last people to whom I wanted to be indebted, but I was told I couldn’t opt out and take unpaid leave.)

A few days after I returned from parental leave, my boss handed me a bill. For the amount he expected me to pay him back for my paid parental leave. You read that correctly. He demanded that I (a W-2 employee) reimburse him (the owner) for my “paid” parental leave. I was like: “Uh, then it’s not really paid leave?” He said, and I swear this is an exact quote: “Yes, it was paid. Believe me, I know because I had to pay it. That’s why you owe it back.”

I know it seems like I must be leaving something out here. I’m not. Employer has a clear and unambiguous policy in the employee handbook, for paid leave for which I clearly qualified. I did, in fact, birth a child. I had, in fact, worked at the firm well more than long enough to qualify for the leave. I took less leave than was allowed – both by my firm and by law. No weird facts here. I had a baby and went on a short maternity leave, nothing fancy or complicated, song as old as time, and no one claimed otherwise. The only dispute was that my boss claimed it is “generally understood” that “paid” leave is essentially an advance, which the firm pays but then the employee owes back. The firm’s policy says nothing about reimbursement and just says “paid” leave, but boss contends that it is inherent in the concept of “paid” leave that the employee will later reimburse the firm. (You don’t even need to tell me he’s wrong and I’m right because, obviously, he’s banana crackers.)

I was dumbfounded but not really surprised. I tabled the conversation for a few months because I hoped that he would decide this wasn’t a nickel he could squeeze with a straight face. But I was wrong. He kept bringing it up, demanding to know my plan for paying him back the money I “owed,” and saying things like “this isn’t something I can just let go.”

This finally came to a head one day, when he popped into my office for the umpteenth time, unannounced, wanting to know my plan for paying him back, while I was in the middle of prepping for an important meeting.

I just had enough. So, I told him my honest thoughts on the matter. This started gently, just explaining that he was wrong – factually, logically, legally, ethically wrong AF – about the meaning of “paid” leave. He doubled down. The conversation escalated in tone and intensity. There were other issues too, so what the heck, while we were at it, I went into those. He played dumb, and told me that I was off-base and that no one had ever disagreed with him on these issues and no one had ever questioned or tried to discuss these issues with him before.

Except, I knew for a fact that someone had quit a month or so earlier, over a dispute about one of these issues, after REPEATEDLY trying to discuss with boss to no avail. I just couldn’t. So I called him on that. And he LOST IT. He stood up, said that never happened, demanded that we call former employee immediately to confirm this never happened, stormed out of my office to grab his cell phone and call this poor woman. Well, that backfired for him, because she answered and she said, “Uh, yeah, that happened.”

Boss then calmed down and reflected and said, “Wow, I’m wrong and also what sort of a lunatic calls a former employee out of the blue to settle a dispute?” Just kidding! Boss did none of that. Instead, he hung up the phone, and looked at me and said, “See, I told you?!”

That’s when I LOST IT. This wasn’t a nuanced issue. It was like I was saying “black,” boss was saying “white,” and former employee was saying “totally black.” Then boss hangs up and declares he heard “totally white”? I know it sounds crazy, but that’s what happened. I’m rarely speechless but I just stood there for a while, with my eyebrows on the ceiling and my jaw at my knees.

Which, brings us to the point of no return. After asking “are you serious?” a few times, I just started screaming at him. He started screaming at me. This spilled out into the common area of the firm. The good people of the world got up to discreetly and politely shut their office doors, embarrassed for us both. It was bad. It was a scene. I’m not proud of it, and I definitely lost my cool and that’s not how I typically handle myself. I eventually ended the “conversation” by screaming “this isn’t productive” a few times, then walked back to my office, grabbed my bag, and left.

On the way home, I was like — wow that happened and this isn’t healthy. So I made one phone call, and in less than 3 hours, I had a better job with a competitor for more pay. (I’m in a niche field, so everyone knows everyone, and they were already familiar with my work.)

I’m not going to lie, it was extremely satisfying to give notice the next morning. Mic drop moment for sure. That was six months ago, and I couldn’t be happier at my new firm.

Also a positive note: Apparently the only way to get that “paid” maternity leave at my old firm is to leave before they can take it out of your bonus, so I got the last laugh on that one.