This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/antiwork by /u/Aarunascut on 2026-06-01 07:40:52+00:00.

Well, I joined my current employer 15 years ago. When negotiating the salary we made a deal that after one year I would get a rise if I performed according to the mandatory annual appraisal.

I did.

My then manager told me he had talked to the upper management and there was no room for a rise in pay right now.

He also demanded that I didn’t report my endless hours of overtime in my weekly work-report, which we had to submit every Friday, as we were working on customer projects and they were billable hours. He said this was because of “cost-transparency”.

I.e. he wanted to shine by completing his projects at lower cost while working us like slaves.

I finished the project with him and then applied to a different department within the company. Since engineers were highly sought after by everyone that didn’t pose any problem.

My new manager was (and is) a marvel.

I told him about the deal with the pay rise. It took him less than half a day to make sure I did indeed get my promised rise in salary.

Many years later our huge project was running into some difficulties. There was talk about replacing my manager with the one that had lied to me. I was asked about my view on this subject by the upper management.

What I told them was that I would stay on for exactly three months, training my replacement. I would not work again for any length of time for the lying guy. I was told to think about this overnight. Next morning I went right back into the managers office and told him that my decision was still the same.

He looked at me and said softly: “Well, that is what your co-workers said, too.”

My hero manager was replaced by another guy after all, who made a mess of it. I was lucky that the good guy simply took me with him to yet another department, where I am happily toiling away to this day.