I'm mostly here to learn about other folks' struggles and learn from them, but ended up with my own tale. I'm doing snow/ice clearing with trucks & loaders, and been with this company for the last two winters. For those unfamiliar, this means pushing snow from one spot to another spot that's more out of the way, or dropping an entire McDonald's worth of salt on the ground to melt snow & ice. The company itself is decent, mostly just the usual growing pains, bureaucracy, and occasional lack of communication you see everywhere, but that's a separate tragedy. Coincidentally, it's also very difficult to find and then retain reliable staff for snow clearing, but that's a separate tragedy.
I started out with a ~30 minute commute, but I moved farther away for ReasonsTM. Was going to work for a closer company, but they offered a 10% raise and 25% higher bonus at a site that wasn't too far, and I would be staying at that site. My new supervisor is also solid and reasonable. Well, surprise, a few people jump ship, and I'm borderline begged to drive further out and pick up a salt truck – something like this. It's an hour+ drive each way just to get to the truck. Went back and forth and was able to get the ops manager to cover some of the travel time – I had used text chat to ensure there was proof.
Skip forward a few weeks, and it turns OpsMan has been very naughty and is going for a vacation. It also turns out he wasn't actually allowed to pay me my time, and accounting was removing it from my timesheets after submission since that's official policy. I didn't notice because I was burnt out from 18 hour shifts and wasn't paying close enough attention. Suffice to say, I was pissed. Asking politely got a nice canned response. This is the point where I applied something that I learned something from this sub.
Remember how I mentioned I was supposed to be saying at one site? I wasn't hired back to drive salt trucks, I was doing it as a favour because the other guys were more burnt out than I am. I'm not gonna spend 50 bucks in gas and two hours of my life for a ~4-hour shift. I just flat-out told my supervisor I wasn't doing it anymore. I feel bad for him since he was already doing 80+ weeks and now he suddenly has no backup driver, but I'm there to make money. Scheduling and staff retention are above my pay grade and NMFP.
Well, lo and behold, a few days later they've back-paid some missing funds, and separately my super got the owner to cover all my travel time moving forward instead. Always remember that the company needs us more than we need it. They're making bank off of us, so tand up for yourself, and demand what's fair!