I worked for for a previous employer for nearly 9 years. It was union work and I spent 4 years of my apprenticeship with him and was a foreman for 5 years after that. He was an asshole on purpose to so many people… but, because I just so happen to be autistic at being a foreman (almost literally), he made a metric sh*t ton of money off of me; so he left me alone. It was nice to have him on my side when the superintendents and/or engineers wanted to push me around but I hated how he treated some of his own guys. I tried to protect them as much as possible but he loved to constantly stir up sh*t for no reason.
For example, we started a new project which requires us to demolish (demo) a lot of the existing building first. The superintendent, who had been decent to us this first day on the job, said to leave one of the A/C units connected that fed the room he was intending to make his office until his mobile office showed up. My boss looked at me, said “follow me”, walked to the panel which fed the panel that powered all of the units, told me to cut the feeders off at the pipe entering the panel, had me throw the peices of wire in his truck, and drove away immediately. Me and my apprentice started demo'ing the 20 or so units and in about an hour, the superintendent found us and said his room is getting hot. I told him my boss had instructed me to cut the wire. Year and half project that was this superintendent trying to ruin everything we did or needed to do because on day one my boss wanted f*uck up someone's day for no reason.
Well, he decided to go non-union and simply assumed I would want to go with him as a “partner”. There was not a lot of work so I didn't want to say anything until I got as much work as possible before he made the switch. I was his master license carrier for his shop that allowed him to be in business, but other than that, I never signed up as a partner nor had anything in writing that I was a partner or organizer of this new entity. I think he thought all the talk about being a partner would distract me from the fact that it wasn't on paper. I may helped by playing dumb to keep a paycheck until the switch.
Finally, after what seemed like 4 months of bullsh*ting me, the week had come and I realized in order to make sure I get my last paycheck I would have to work the first 2 days of the next pay period under the new company like I'm all aboard. The last day as a union shop was the day before payday and, not too surprising, he started saying as a partner you have to be able to miss a few paychecks while the work comes in. I was standing in his office just listening like I'm a child getting in trouble and taking it while he reluctantly preparing my last check. He was laying on real thick, being a true condescending asshole saying, things like how can I expect to go into business if I can't budget enough to jave a savings account and how it is common to not get paid regularly for the first 6 months of business. He then said I made good money a few months back and what happened to that money? That if I'm going to be a partner I need to handle my money better.
I know all he was doing is being a loudmouth asshole so I would be uncomfortable asking for a paycheck every week. And I was trying to keep him believing I would be staying; until I could cash that check. So I ate his bowl of sh*t with “Yes sir. I totally get it”.
It was after hours when he finally quit bitching and handed me the check. So I went to his bank and cashed the check the next day (Saturday). Once I had cash in hand I had my wife follow me to work, dropped off my company vehicle with everything inside and was done.
He called me Monday morning talking cautiously like, “What's going on?” I just said, “I thought about what you said and you're right. I'm not good enough with money to go 6 months without a paycheck. I hate to turn down such a gracious offer of being a partner but I can hardly make it one week without a paycheck. I'll just have to settle for grunt work. I don't want to weigh you down with my needs”. I basically repeated everything he told me the previous Friday so that he could feel like his rant was the reason I was leaving. I wanted him to feel the backfire.
He started tap dancing saying, “Now we can figure out a way around that. We could have a credit account for making sure you have a steady paycheck. I just meant that times can be harder when you were in business for yourself. But there's things we can do buddy”.
I just said, “No. I don't wanna ruin your new company by being so needy.” I wanted to tell him I was never going to work for the new company but it was much more fun to watch him eats every damn word of his and scramble to try and undo his damage.
He closed up shop. No master: no money.