I just have to get this off my chest.
Let me start the story I graduated from college in August with a degree in biology, not from an esteemed university, but I worked full time and still managed to finish in 6 years. I graduate and look for a job in this terrible market for something to do with the degree that I worked my ass off to get. I finally land a job after 6 months of looking. The job is in a different city but still I’m the same state so it’s not a terrible move, I ask for any sort of compensation for moving since I’m moving cities and it costed a lot, declined. I get to the job and find it to be easier than bartending or serving so it’s no big deal the job progressively got a lot harder in the past 2 months and it goes beyond just dumb biology corporate BS. The company expanded at such a rate that they have passed their targeted revenue by 30%, they made 44 million in revenue. All of this while keeping the same number of staff while,increasing the complexity of the jobs being asked, the whole company feels the strain and refuses to budge an inch about it. Maybe it’s because they got bought out by a huge global company they now have their hands tied, but I refuse to believe that when the company generates so much income by itself alone and now they have a tap in a multi billion dollar corporation.
So now the pill I can’t swallow. Austin and Texas were hit with a really bad ice storm and the whole city lost power for a week and the roads froze over freezing all work. (no pun intended). I living walking distance from my job and I went in to make sure no one was there and I want missing work because I had no power myself. As I walk in I’m relaxed and hanging out and then the responsibilities start to grow change tanks, check freezers, check in packages, make sure all specimens are frozen, making sure everything is accounted for, for my entire department. Mind you I just started working there and am still relatively fresh to this job so the workload was immense to say the least. But the job got done by myself and everything was accounted for and everything was frozen when the company picked up normal operations again. Expecting to get paid overtime was the biggest mistake I have ever made I should have let those samples thaw and lost the company hundreds of thousands of dollars, lost potential clients, bring the whole company to a screeching halt when the ice was over. Because the disrespect and manipulation they did to me was beyond reproach. I was under the assumption that because I was working in the office I would be getting overtime. The sad truth was that I wasn’t. They had me do the work of an entire department by myself all while hoarding the information of me not getting an ounce of overtime for the work I did. They sat there and grinned and said thank you for your hard work your the ideal employee. Then to run around and not even give me less than 400 dollars for overtime while the company grows at an exponential rate is ludicrous at best and unethical at worst. I go up to my manager today because I don’t see anything about on my time sheet. She says we know you deserve overtime but we can do it because it would be unfair to those who work from home who generally make more than my entry level job. While talking to HR I told her this as well, that people who work from home, like herself make more than me and she knows it. She said the best we can do is a company award program that could take up to two months to review and complete. I’ve had crackheads show me more respect in downtown than these corporate people. I didn’t ask for a lot I told them they could zelle me 200 bucks and they still balked. I have nothing against any one of these people personally, honestly, they all think I deserve to be compensated for the tremendous amount of work I did right after starting to work for them. But yet here I am feeling like I just made a huge mistake moving and working for them. Not even six months in and I updated my resume and I give myself two weeks before I start applying.
TLDR; Small company bought out by big company refuses to pay me overtime when the whole company shut down for a storm and I did the work for my entire department.