Boss Tries Making Salaried Employee Work on His Home

Working a salaried job has its perks. You’re basically being paid a retainer in order to be available when the company needs you to get something done in your respective field of expertise, however, it can also be a double-edged sword.

And a lot of these pros and cons are contingent upon the industry you’re in. Let’s say you’re working at an IT department help desk and are expected to field requests during a certain time of the day: some days may be slow and you won’t receive many calls or requests for assistance.

And other days you may find yourself mobbed with queries that spill over to other work days. And some industries have different compensation structures like this low-voltage company Redditor @arthritis9 works for.

Arthritis is a salaried employee, however, the scope of their work is for a very specific number of tasks and when it comes to electrical work, they won’t touch anything about 48 volts.

The trouble at work began when Arthritis was called into the COO of the company’s job in order to do some work in his house, all during their normal working hours.

The COO stressed that he wanted Arthritis to come during the time solely so they don’t have to be paid, aka, the COO’s using company resources for free in order to get work done at his home without paying for it.

The trouble is, the COO ended up calling in a salaried employee who isn’t supposed to be doing the type of work that the COO requested.

The Redditor writes: “I don’t get paid to do higher voltage/electrician-level work, despite knowing how to do minor repairs/additions, and therefore sent him a quote of what it would cost to complete his request.”

Arthritis went on to say that they would be able to do the job for $350, which also included parts and labor, however, their COO again mentioned the Redditor was a salaried employee, and presumably thought that he wouldn’t have to pay for the work.

The Redditor wanted to know if they were in the wrong for charging their boss for work that was outside of the scope of their salaried duties, and many folks told them that they weren’t.

“It’s incredibly unprofessional of your boss to be requesting you use company resources for his own personal gain. That’s the kind of thing they can get people fired; though with his role that probably wouldn’t happen.

One thing to point out: would you even be insured to do that work?” one commenter wrote.

“NTA, your boss is an idiot, so many red flags on this!” another person wrote while adding that the work could potentially be a massive insurance liability especially if they aren’t supposed to be performing those particular tasks.

The question of whether or not the Redditor’s boss could attempt to jam them up for not agreeing to do the work also arose, and there were some suggestions as to how OP could best handle that situation. Several users on the platform heavily stressed the importance of documenting everything that happened on the job.

“OP document everything, including photographic evidence of all of the work to be done, and make sure that the any parts used is from the company or reimbursed by the company. Tax-wise it’s so low level it’s not going to be worthwhile going after more than likely,” one user wrote.

They continued, “Follow up in writing with him once the job is done in writing, with your photographs, to CYA so you have a paper trail in the event that he tries to deny it later if something happens. Unfortunately, he’s likely used to getting what he wants because of his position, and you can only seek other employment opportunities is likely your next step.”