How much does it cost to be an asshole?

There’s an old saying: civility costs nothing. So, what is the cost of being a prick? Well, I can quantify it to $2,746.50.

You’re probably wondering how I reached that figure. Let me show you the sums.

I was working as a director for a government agency; it had oversight of other state government departments. I am an ex-cop, so a part of my work was overseeing the state police as well. I also have always been very open about my mental health, having been diagnosed with PTSD, depression, and anxiety.

About 6 months into working there, one of the directors from the investigations area reached out and asked if I’d be willing to help for a while with the on-call roster for when there were any deaths in police custody.

I like to consider myself a good corporate citizen, so I agreed, knowing that there were a lot of other directors also on the roster; this meant I would only end up having to be on-call one week in every 8. But then they started taking people off the on-call roster, until I was on call one week in every 3-4 weeks.

It also started to increase my anxiety; obviously, the nature of why I was on call was one part, but the other part was that your sleep patterns would get messed up because you didn’t know when a call might come in.

Finally, I thought I’d better do the right thing for myself and my family, so, knowing the new roster would be getting put together soon, I asked the person who prepares the roster to remove me. Her response was supportive; she said, “You were helping us out, so of course I’ll take you off”. I assumed that would be the end of it.

A few days later, I was off sick. When I returned, there was an email from my boss, who had been told by her boss that I couldn’t just self-select to remove myself from the on-call roster. It was a part of my job, and since I hadn’t spoken to him about it, I was to stay on the roster until he decided I would come off the roster.

Let’s not even get into sending an email like that when someone is on a sick day. I was enraged that there was no contemplation of having a conversation with me about why I had asked to be removed from the roster.

I also didn’t agree with the assessment that it was my job, so I looked at the position description against which I was hired. Zero mention of performing on-call duties.  Then I looked at my employment contract. Turns out that did have a section saying that I could be directed to be on call, and in those circumstances, it stipulated they would:

1)      Provide me with a mobile phone, and

2)      Pay me an on-call allowance.

Now, they had given me a mobile phone when I started, but not once did I ever get paid an on-call allowance.

Anyway, I was disappointed with the whole way they had treated me, so I sent an email to my boss setting out that I wanted to be removed from the on-call roster because it was affecting my family and me, but also asked: “Please advise how I can go about claiming my on-call allowance”.

My boss replied the next day that her boss would come back to me advising on his decision.

I asked the other directors who were also on call, and they said, “We don’t get paid an on-call allowance”. So, I went to a friend in the HR Department. She had a look at my employment contract and said, “Oh hang on, they’ve given you the wrong contract, yeah, they have to pay you on call”.

Two months passed with no advice from senior management. The new roster was drafted up, and I was placed back on call. As if the universe were paying me back for rocking the boat, I got called about some particularly distressing jobs.  I checked with my boss, and she told me she had asked her boss, who had told her he was waiting on HR. I went back to my friend in HR.

“No, we’re not doing anything with it; they sent it off to Legal to try to get you put on a new contract”, she advised me. Now I was enraged.

I had to do an annual psychological assessment for the job, which was the next week. The impact of being placed on call regularly was a topic of discussion. The assessing psychologist couldn’t believe that I’d be treated like that; she recommended that I be removed from the roster.

I found out I’d been removed from the roster when another person who was on call told me about it. Nobody from senior management communicated it to me.

I ended up getting a job elsewhere and had to give 4 weeks' notice, so I figured I had nothing to lose. I kept emailing management for an update on my unpaid allowance.

Two days before I finished, I got an email advising me that I would receive an additional $2,746.50 in my final pay.

At that point I realized that if I had just been removed from the roster when I had requested it, I would never have looked at my contract, and I would never have discovered this allowance they should have been paying me. But they wanted to prove a point, and in the end, it cost them nearly $3,000.

As I said, civility costs nothing.

Thanks for reading. Please like and comment.

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