This happened years ago while I was in nursing school. I took an overnight job in a recycling plant for decent hourly pay and mind numbing work. Basically I took large sheets of rubber off of a packet and fed it into a shredder for processing. Two other guys worked overnight also, both driving forklift. One to deliver packets to me and another to keep the bins at the other end of the shredder empty.
It was a physically tough job, but relatively easy. Only issue was feeding in the sheets at the right rate to have everything flow perfectly without going too fast and jamming the machine. I was told at hiring that if I hit a certain quota, it was a $100 bonus per shift. My coworker told me no one ever hit it due to trying to go too fast and jamming the machine.
Well my second week I had the pace figured out perfectly. If I fed at this steady pace and never jammed I could hit the quota. I did this every night that week and the next anticipating that sweet bonus money to help with school.
Lo and behold my check comes and no bonus. I stop into HR to get it corrected only to be told that I’m not eligible for the bonus as I’m on probation for 90 days. After that, I get the bonus. I pointed out that she hadn’t said anything about the probation period when using the bonus to sell me on the position and she just shrugged and said that since no one ever hits it she didn’t think it would be an issue.
After her reiterating that there was no way I would be getting the bonus money I’d already earned, I quit on the spot. My two partners both contacted me a few days later and told me their shift was shut down the entire week until they could hire a temp to take my spot but not to worry they were already in the union and we’re still getting paid.
So being stingy on a bonus for a quota they implemented thinking it was unobtainable ended up costing them thousands in lost production and a great worker. All for a few hundred bucks.