Boss Refuses to Pay a Dime to Pregnant & Sick Employee, Later She Forwards His E-mail to Everyone

After she got into a minor car accident, the woman had to go to work with a herniated disk, and it was getting difficult to work because she was pregnant. She wrote a Reddit post explaining how her boss decided to fire her despite knowing how hard she had worked.

The woman worked in political campaigning on a contractual basis, which meant she didn't have a full-time job. She had made a good name by working on multiple campaigns.

Last year, her husband lost his job and went from a six-figure salary to zero. They spent eight months with no income until the woman got her big break.

The woman shared that she worked as a contractor for political campaigns and didn't work full-time. She switched the political drives one after the other. She had built a good rapport working on the lower level.

However, she got her big break during the statewide elections this time. She managed to get hired as a Campaign Manager, but her political party lost by 200 votes.

Despite the loss, her experience as a Campaign Manager (CM) worked in her favor because her party lost by a few votes, and she was the youngest CM.

OP (Original Poster) started looking for new vacancies for CM, which would offer her a good salary. She also shared that she didn't want to relocate because she had just bought a new house.

A few weeks after joining the campaign, the woman got into a minor car accident and ended up with a herniated disc.

Eventually, she got hired for a local campaign that paid her less than her expected salary. A few days after working as a CM for the new campaign, she realized she had a horrible boss.

She confessed she was waiting for her husband to get a job so she could quit hers and look for another campaign. Until then, she decided to give it her best shot. She explained:

"I ended up building out our entire team, consultant, fundraiser, staff, etc."

OP signed a contract with her boss that if she managed to raise enough money in the upcoming three months, she would get a salary raise, and there was no way they could lower her pay.

A few weeks after joining the campaign, the woman got into a minor car accident and ended up with a herniated disc. Everything went well until she realized she had gotten pregnant, and her injury hindered her movement. She preferred working from home instead of going to the office because of her back pain. She explained:

"I had The team working in lock step and I was proud of the work I was doing even though only about 10% of my views aligned with the campaign. Then we hit a snag."

The candidate stopped fundraising for personal reasons, which affected the team. However, after some time, her issues got resolved, and she resumed fundraising, but they were short on time.

OP managed to get the team working at full speed, trying her best to make the campaign work. Despite her medical condition, she still worked hard for the campaign.

A few weeks later, OP told her boss that she couldn't join her other teammates doing door-to-door work because of her injured back. She suggested hiring someone else, but the lack of funds made it seem impossible. This meant the responsibility now fell on the candidate. OP explained what happened next:

"We had a team meeting with the entire team and I started pressuring the candidate about all the things she wasn’t doing and there was a legitimate meltdown."

OP's boss started yelling at her and blamed her for the campaign's failure. She hung up on the entire team after claiming that OP wasn't doing her job right.

After the meeting, OP decided not to do any extra tasks and silently played her role as the CM. Her boss noticed her behavior and called her. She said:

“Since you are pregnant and can no longer door knock you can either work for (state minimum wage) or you can find a new job.”

OP's boss knew her husband was unemployed, so she assumed OP wouldn't leave her post. However, her husband luckily got a job offer the same day, so she told her boss that she didn't want to continue working. She told her boss that she would serve the 30-day notice period on the same salary and then leave.

But her boss refused to pay her a dime and started yelling about how poorly she had performed. OP cut her, telling her she won't work unless she received her previous month's salary and the current month's salary.

After waiting for a few hours, OP realized that her boss wouldn't respond, so she sent her an email saying the same things discussed on the call. Her boss replied with a nasty email, telling her she wouldn't get anything and listed ten reasons why she terminated OP. She explained what happened next:

"I decided to send this email to the rest of the team and sure enough everyone quit except for the consultant. In 5 minutes she lost everyone she had."

Luckily, OP's friend was looking for someone to work for him simultaneously, so she got hired within five minutes of being fired. However, there was something that OP had missed.

Her boss hadn't signed the contract, which said she needed to pay her for the 30 days notice period. OP's boss started sending emails to other people, ranting about her, but didn't know that OP still had access to the email and could read everything.

Through the emails, OP realized that her boss didn't have a problem with her performance; it was just that she wanted to reduce OP's salary because she was pregnant. OP also got her hands on the signed contract copy through the emails.

Her boss sent the signed copy to her consultant, who hired a lawyer to fight the case. OP immediately downloaded the signed contract file and saved evidence depicting her boss wanting to pay a pregnant woman less. OP recalled:

"She continues to pester me about turning over all of my work, the thing is since I’m an independent contractor I only owe her a final product if I get paid. I reiterate that she isn’t getting anything until I’ve been paid and she can take it up with my lawyer."

OP's boss then told her consultant to call OP and ask her to take her case back. OP refused, after which the consultant called her back, telling her the boss also fired him.

Within two weeks, OP's boss was back to square one, with no employees working for her campaign. One night, she messaged OP at 11 p.m., telling her she was willing to pay her. OP didn't respond and went to sleep. She recalled:

"By the time I wake up in the morning I have 20 texts and 5 missed calls."

OP told her she would get back to her after talking to her lawyer. Twenty minutes later, OP received a call from the police informing her that her boss had filed a complaint against her for embezzlement and stealing data.

But after a detailed investigation, the police realized OP's boss's claims were false. Instead, they told OP's boss that it would be theft if she didn't pay OP her due salaries. They even asked OP if she would like to file a complaint against her boss, but OP refused, saying she would do so if she didn't get her salary. After that, OP explained:

"Within two days I received a check in the mail with my payment and I turned everything over."

OP concluded her post by saying her boss lost the elections by 15 points. The internet applauded because OP fought for her rights and won.

"Made my afternoon. That was juicy. Each new paragraph telling us what else was she doing, emailing or calling," wrote Gigaduuude. Another Redditor named gruss72 replied:

"Great you got what you're owed...but this person needs to be taken down harder."

"People like that are self-destructive; they get what's coming to them," replied OP. "In this case, her bruised ego is not something that she easily recovered from," she added.

Meanwhile, Snarky75 shared that her boss also fired her for being pregnant. She sued him and won the lawsuit. OP felt happy for the woman and replied:

"I thought no one would believe me that there are actually such terrible employers out there that would do something so clearly illegal."

The Redditor shared that her boss mocked his last assistant who got pregnant and asked her not to have babies. OP replied that she applied for a job where the interviewer asked her if she had any plans to get pregnant because the previous pregnant employee became a "financial strain" for the company.

Most Redditors agreed that OP's boss was horrible because of what she made OP go through. However, they felt happy that OP fought for her rights.

Questions to Ponder:

Do you think OP should have quit her job in the beginning?

OP confessed she saw the red flags initially, which meant she could have quit her job in the beginning. She could have looked for other jobs instead of continuing this one. However, some people might disagree, saying she couldn't quit her job because her husband was unemployed. What do you think?

Do you think gender discrimination still exists in modern workplaces?

What OP faced was gender discrimination at her workplace since her boss wanted to pay her less because she was pregnant. Do you think gender discrimination still exists in modern workplaces? Have you ever witnessed anything similar?

If you enjoyed reading this story, you might like this one about a woman who applied for a job and encountered the girl she had harassed years ago.

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