Boss Angry After Discovering Worker Has A Second Job Even Though He's Only Paying Her $30k A Year
What exactly does he expect her to do? Pitch a tent behind the office?
Photo: Billion Photos | Canva Pro Jobs often come with stipulations that forbid employees from working for other companies, but typically, those are high-level professional jobs that come with livable salaries. It's not like restaurants and coffee shops are out here requiring servers to be loyal. That's delusional. Not as delusional, however, as the employer one female worker complained about online, who splits the difference, offering professional jobs with fast-food pay — but still insists upon exclusivity.
A woman's boss is angry she has a second job even though he only pays her a $30,000 a year salary.
This is the kind of absurd conundrum that could only happen in America and only in 2025. This young person found herself in a situation that will be familiar to many young workers these days — she landed her "dream job," but not dream pay. She was offered $40,000 a year, but only after staying for one full year. Until then, it's $30,000, like some kind of bizarre probation period.
She took the job, she said, because she was desperate — she was so broke she was donating plasma to survive, and the job is in her chosen field and seemed like a great way to start her career. But the money is, of course, a problem.
"This is not enough money for me to survive off of, as I live in a city where rent is insane," she wrote in her post. However, that last part is really irrelevant — $30,000 a year is not enough to survive basically anywhere in America anymore. So, unsurprisingly, she has a second job — because without one, she'd be homeless. But that's become a huge problem for her boss.
Her boss said she's not sufficiently dedicated to the job and wants her to quit her job as a barista.
When she took her job, she knew she'd have to occasionally work on Sundays for training events. Likewise, her boss knew she had a second gig when he hired her. But now, suddenly, it's a problem.
The drama appears to have been sparked when she assured her boss that her barista gig would not interfere with a planned workday on an upcoming Sunday. He seems to have taken her clarification of this to mean that there was a chance her job with him wouldn't have taken precedence, and he sent her a long email diatribe lecturing her about her lack of dedication.
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"Our policy is that when a Program Coordinator works at [company], we want her/him to be completely focused on [company] without outside distractions that will impact the employee's ability to function at full energy through the week and be present for Sunday or after hours classes and events as needed," the boss blathered on. "We made an exception to hire you."
Sounds like a personal problem to me, buddy. The entire nature of this conversation is absurd. Nobody forced him to make that exception, and she only works her barista job on Saturdays. What difference does it make? But that is, of course, only the tip of the iceberg.
This worker was under no obligation to comply with her boss's delusional demands.
If you're paying people a poverty wage, you don't get to make additional demands, especially around things that were worked out ahead of time. The levels of delusion are truly staggering.
But it comes into even sharper focus when some commenters pointed out just how low her salary really is. "*I live in Illinois. Minimum wage is $15 so over $30,000/yr at 40hr weeks," one person wrote. "Sandwich shops like Jersey Mike's are starting high school kids at $17.50-18/hr."
That's a minimum of $35,000 a year. This woman could probably be earning more as a full-time barista than she is as a Program Coordinator at her "dream job." That is absurd, and that her boss has the unmitigated gall to complain about it is diabolical. You can't have your cake and eat it, too. Either pay fairly or quit crying.
This young person is, of course, worried about burning a bridge and messing up a good start to her career — and that is worth considering. But what's also worth considering is, and I say this as someone older and wiser, once you let someone walk all over you like this once, it becomes easier and easier to keep letting it happen down the road.
As another Redditor put it, "he wants exclusive access to your work, time, and services but isn’t paying enough to deserve that exclusivity. Sounds like a him problem." Exactly. This goes above and beyond normal employer audacity, and one of the hard truths about life is that people treat you how you allow them to treat you. Act accordingly.
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.