Boss earning $450,000 offers employee salary below child’s school fees; worker says she feels like a ‘slave’ after frequent 90-hour weeks

Working 12 hours a day from dawn till dusk, juggling multiple roles, and even running the business solo, only to be told your employer “can’t afford” to pay you more, sounds crazy, right? That’s the horrendous situation one worker says they found themselves in. On Reddit, the user shared their frustration after learning that their boss reported a taxable income of about $450,000 last year while claiming they “couldn’t afford” to pay the employee more than $65,000 annually.

The employee said they had been working long hours for months, every day, often starting at 5 a.m. and finishing as late as 7 p.m., and routinely performing duties far beyond their job description, including running the business alone while their boss was on vacation. “Despite working my ass off, and discussing salary, my boss only was willing to pay $65k a year (which I had to fight for),” the user wrote.

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They added that their employer cited business losses as the reason for denying higher pay, a claim the employee questioned, noting that the boss’s child attends a private school costing roughly the same amount as their annual salary. “I’m a literal slave,” they shared before disclosing that the boss considered them as ‘an asset’ in a comment.

The post struck a chord with other Redditors, many of whom urged the employee to start looking for a new job. “I feel you. 100% start looking for another job,” one top commenter advised. The original poster replied that both they and a coworker were planning to quit but expressed anxiety about the current job market and the risk of ending up in a worse situation.

Another commenter offered reassurance, reframing job-hopping as self-preservation rather than failure. “You’ll be escaping either toxicity or a stagnant way of making a living,” they wrote, encouraging the poster to trust their instincts.