I’m 34 this year, senior role. Joined this mid-sized local company about 6 months ago. During the interview, boss was selling the whole “we work hard, play hard, we are like a big family here” story. Red flag right? But salary was ok, so I took it.
Fast forward to last month. Huge project deployment. For two straight weeks, I was staying back until 10pm, 11pm almost every single night clearing backlog and fixing setup issues. Weekend also on standby. Naturally, at the end of the month, I submitted my OT claim according to what was stated in my contract allowance policy.
Guess what happened?
HR called me into the meeting room together with the Director. I thought they were going to review the deployment. Instead, the Director looked at my claim form like I committed high treason.
He literally said: “Kong, we don’t really have a ‘clock in, clock out’ culture here. People stay back because they care about the mission. Asking for OT pay shows you are not really aligned with our team values. To be honest, we feel you are not a good culture fit.”
KNN. Culture fit??? Since when is wanting to be paid for my actual labor a “culture mismatch”?
And don’t get me started on their toxic “culture”. Every month got those brainwashing company bonding events—compulsory team dinners where you spend 3 hours listening to the Director talk about his life philosophy, or weekend charity runs where you’re forced to act happy for their LinkedIn photos. Only those completely brainwashed morons will swallow this “company is family” bullshit. Last I checked, my real family doesn’t make me do 15 hours of extra work a week for free.
If company is family, then OT pay is allowance lor! Why when ask for money suddenly become “transactional”?
I already started sending out my resume tonight. To all the bosses out there abusing the word “culture”: pay your people properly. We work for money, not for your corporate Kool-Aid.
Anyone else kena this kind of gaslighting before? How do you guys reply when they throw the “culture fit” card at you?