Story time.
I worked in a position for 5 years at a marketing and branding company.
- Branded companies.
- Did video editing.
- Designed and managed websites.
- etc.
Made $20 an hour. No benefits or perks. Straight hourly employee. Started right out of college and stayed out of a mix of guilt and anxiety.
My coworker at the time convinced me that both her and I were making the same amount of money. Turned out she's a liar and was making something closer to $32hr. She had been lying to me so my pay wouldn't cut into hers. She admitted as much when I finally left the company.
I walked when Covid hit. I had the nerve to ask my boss to cover my hours when working from home because he'd only pay us by project rather than the full day when we worked from home. I was sick with Covid and so was my mom who had just beaten cancer. (Sounds too awful to be true but it genuinely is)
My boss didn't like that and proceeded to basically insult me and belittle me and try and make me out like I was the problem. I was tired, sick with Covid, emotionally burned out and dealing with a mother who just survived cancer surgery. I walked.
The Ex-boss (greaseball scumbag) decided to send me a “cease and desist” because he didn't like I was working in the same area and offering the same types of services to similar clients. My prices are much lower and my work is the same since I was literally the guy doing half the work in his office.
(Apparently, when his clients would argue with him over their invoice bills, my name would come up and they'd ask why I was a fraction of the price for the same type of work. They had my advertisements and would literally see the same service at half the price. He didn't have an answer and from what I heard, he lost clients.)
The cease and desist was bullshit and made some fake claims about me “stealing” his clients. Never happened. I wrote back basically telling him to make peace with the fact him and I have taken different paths in life. “If you feel different you're welcomed to sue me.”
He didn't though because he did a lot of illegal tax shit while I was working there and any kind of review of the books (him claiming legal damages, which there are none. would reveal he wasn't paying taxes on everything he sold.)
The beauty of it was he never made me a contracted employee. I was “At Will” because they wanted to always have the ability to fire me without notice or give me any sort of contractual perks. Ultimately, he fucked himself and his company out of greed as he had no legal options to stop me when I finally walked.
When I left, I left without any legal red tape. No non-compete. No loss of my work over those 5 years. No nothing. I walked intact and I went solo.
I started my own company the end of that year and I now work for a mix of independent private clients and manage the brands for a group of local non-profit organizations (which is the work I always wanted to do.)
I'm the happiest I have ever been in my working life. My whole family sees it and they comment on how happy I am. I make more money than I ever did at my previous job and I have more clients just for myself than my previous job had in the last year I worked there.
Don't ever allow anyone to make you feel like you're worthless or to make you feel like you're stuck. Employers are not enslavers and if you are being fucked over by someone and know you're capable of more, take the leap. You're worth more than scumbags and abusers.