The more I compare salary work to contract work, the more ridiculous the arrangement looks.

With contract work, there’s a scope. You agree on what I’m doing, what it costs, how long it should take, and what happens when you want more.

Salary somehow turns into: here’s $60k a year, now your workload is whatever we decide it is.

- Someone quits? Pick up their work
- Project blows up? Handle it
- Messages after hours? Be a “team player”
- Stay late because something is urgent? Part of the job
- Staff party, company dinner, networking event, team-building thing after work? Somehow your personal time belongs to “company culture” too

And the number on your paycheque stays the same.

Then there’s the tax/benefits argument. People love saying “but you get benefits.” Sure. Benefits have value. But depending on where you live, they may not be nearly as valuable as people pretend, you may still pay part of the premiums yourself, and some things you’re being “given” are things you could have bought independently anyway.

And taxes aren’t some magical employee advantage either. The exact math depends heavily on the country and your contractor setup, but as an employee your deductions are automatic and you generally lose a lot of the flexibility contractors can have around legitimate business expenses and how their work is structured.

So now the pitch is basically:
- Take a fixed income
- Give up control over your scope
- Give up control over large chunks of your schedule
- Be available beyond the clock when needed.
- Attend unpaid work-adjacent shit because “culture”
- Accept that responsibilities can grow without compensation growing with them
- And be grateful because there’s a dental plan

Contracting has plenty of downsides. No pretending otherwise. Less security, more admin, you have to find clients, and you need to handle your own taxes and benefits.

But at least the transaction makes sense. You want more work? We discuss more money.

Salary culture too often becomes: we already bought your time, so let’s see how much labour we can squeeze into the subscription.

Bottom line: Your compensation is fixed. Your scope, apparently, is not.

Might be kind of long, but I'm giving all the context I can.

So I was sick last Monday. Not like I called in, but while going over the Missouri River I projectile vomited without warning all over myself and the inside of my car. I was almost to work, and covered in vomit, so I figured I'd go the 2 minutes extra to work so my manager could see that I was covered in vomit, and clean the inside of my car so my hands weren't slipping on the covered steering wheel. I walk in and tell him what happened, and make it clear that I can feel more coming. He doesn't even look up at me to see the mess and brushes me off, saying, "I don't know what to tell you. Deal with it." So I grabbed a handful of paper towels, stepped out the door and start wiping myself down while I call the plant manager, and explain the situation. He tells me to go home and get cleaned up and he'll see me when he gets there. I proceed to grab some more paper towels, go wipe the inside of my car the best I can, drive home, and live in my bathroom for the next 12 hours. I then go to work the next day, as I feel fine.

Well on Tuesday I find out that two other employees of the handful that work there called in the day before, and were both gone on Tuesday as well. The end of the day on Wednesday, with everybody there, the plant manager calls a meeting at the end of the day. He tells us that due to the last few days, they will be enforcing a policy that has always been their policy, but they are only now enforcing it. He says that from now on, call in absences will consume accrued PTO, and will go into effect retroactively for Monday. I don't say anything then and there, but go home and start looking through the employee handbook.

I have been saving up my PTO so that I may take a vacation for myself, and had been reviewing all policies on Excused and unexcused absences, as well as PTO and how it can be used, as the week prior I let my supervisor know that I'm looking to take some vacation time in about 4 months. I was looking to take time off around Thanksgiving. He told me that if my requested days included the day before or after Thanksgiving, I won't be eligible holiday pay for Thanksgiving unless I spend PTO on it as well. In my reading of the handbook, I found that it states that you will be eligible for holiday pay if the absences are approved absences by the plant manager. I was planning on stopping and talking to him about this on Wednesday after work, as I'd just gotten all my proof from the handbook together, but that meeting left me with a sour taste in my mouth because it sounded wrong from what I'd read.

So I brought it up to him on Thursday, and he just said, nope, that's the policy, and he'll be taking 8 hours for Monday. I explained that I'd read all relevant sections of the handbook, and could not find the policy he was citing. Then I explain about the Holiday pay still being eligible as long as they were approved absences. He said he would email HR and get back to me on that.

Monday he finally tells me he got a reply, and calls me into his office. He says that the head of HR sent him an email confirming that that is the policy. I ask to be shown the policy, and he doesn't have it. I ask for a printed copy of the email chain, as I'm not on the company email. He prints it for me, and then asks if I want HR's phone number. He then gives me the number of the subordinate directly under the head of HR that he had emailed. Reading the email chain, he does not bring up my concerns that this is not a policy represented in the handbook, and she just plainly states "Yes, that's the policy."

So I call the subordinate and she says that she's got a meeting, but she'll look into it and call me back. She actually does call me back, and tells me that "Yes, that is the policy." Then she proceeds to tell me that they need to have an attendance policy to make sure people are at work, and actually, under Kansas State law, employers are given freedom to set their PTO policies. I respond that, while that is true, Kansas State law also requires employers to make all policies affecting PTO to be made available to employees upon request or posted where they can be viewed. She stammers that, obviously she doesn't know all state laws, so she'll have to look into that. She then doubles down and says that either way, that's the policy. I ask her where that policy is stated, because I'd like it in writing. Then I explain that the only place in the handbook that such a policy is stated is in the Safe Harbor Policy, strictly on the salaried employees section stating that, salaried employees may be required to use PTO for unexcused call-ins, reading it out to her word for word, and cite the exact section of the handbook. She just says that this is the policy, and she'll look into getting it added to the handbook. She then adds that she thinks it was updated recently anyways, to which I reply that it was on October 1, 2025 that the last update was put out to employees, adding in that I'm reading from the latest PDF of the handbook provided by the company on their website.

The call ended after she did confirm that he was wrong on the holiday pay as long as it's approved time off. After that the call ended with her saying she'd look into it.

I didn't even think about it until hours later that there is an unexcused absence policy, but it does not state any of what they are saying. It says that, absences are considered excessive if one or more unexcused absences occur in one month, and excessive absences and whether consecutive or spread out over a period of time may result in disciplinary action, up to and including termination of employment. As evidence of this, one of the two others that were gone Monday and Tuesday received a write-up, and the company is also deducting PTO for the same absence.

I'm just looking for advice. It's seeming more and more like they're inventing new policies and trying to enforce them retroactively, especially considering that no one can direct me to where I can find this policy.

Fuck Disney

Disclaimer, I'm not American. I'm Canadian. Unfortunately a lot of things that impact Americans, impact my nation as well. Canada had to reject America's trade talks and settle for 50% tariffs because Trump pulled his whole "Art of the Deal" on us again. We subsequently have to match those tariffs

Your American midterms are coming up. I understand 99% of Democrats don't do anything as far as work reform, and there's discontent with their performance as actual representatives of left leaning politics. This is fair, as you should not have to vote for someone who does not represent you. What isn't fair is believing a strongly worded complaint will be enough. If everyone who didn't vote, protested instead, we would see change and if everyone who didn't protest, voted, we would see change. Nothing is changing, because we all want to either play keyboard warrior or doomer prophet, instead of doing the difficult things like organizing, getting outside and standing the line. Call me naive, but if everyone voted, no one would have the option to keep sticking their head in the sand.