Eight Ways Your Employer Can Screw You Over (That Aren’t Just Firing You)

Nearly 20% of American workers describe themselves as “miserable” at their job, half say they’re stressed at work, and 18% use the word “angry” to describe how they feel toward their job. Most people work to survive—to pay bills and feed themselves—which is not exactly a recipe for contentment and job satisfaction.

Still, for the most part, it’s a relatively straightforward exchange: You give your time and skills, and a company gives you money and other benefits in return. Your job has a lot of influence over your life, though, and there are a lot of ways you can get screwed over at work. Getting fired without cause (or for a bullshit cause) is the most obvious way your job can screw you over, but it’s not the only way—here are eight others, and what to do if they happen to you.

Tax mistakes

One of the easiest ways an employer can make your life miserable is to mess up your tax situation. If they issue an incorrect W2 form and you use that form to file your taxes, it could cause you to pay the wrong amount of tax or receive an incorrect refund. Incorrectly filed taxes can also impact things like your Social Security benefits or the rate at which you’re taxed.

Employers are also responsible for withholding taxes on your behalf; if they miscalculate and under-withhold, you could face a big fat tax bill—or, worse, a penalty if the under-withholding is egregious. One of the things your employer is supposed to withhold are the taxes covered under the Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA), including Social Security and Medicare. These are “matched” withholdings—if you were supposed to pay $5,000 in FICA taxes, your employer should have withheld $5,000 from your paychecks and then sent $10,000 to the government. If they didn’t, they can require you to return the $5,000 you were accidentally paid, or else they’ll have to report it as income paid to you, which will have an impact on your tax bill.

What you can do: You can (and should) file an amended tax return when you receive a corrected W2, then pay any extra tax you owe. If your employer didn’t withhold for FICA taxes, you should calculate what should have been withheld and contact a tax professional about getting it all straightened out. Most importantly, you should always review your pay stubs and make sure the withholdings include FICA line items and seem in line with your expectations. If you think your employer is under- or over-withholding, contact your Human Resources Department and get them to look into it.

Strategic non-promotion

In the world of backhanded compliments, being passed over for a promotion because you’re too valuable in your current position sure is a corker. Managers are supposed to nurture your career growth—or at least not stand in the way of it—but if you’re making their life easy with all your competence and work ethic, they might decide to promote other, less-deserving folks over you. This way they don’t have to hire, train, and mentor someone else into your position. This obviously has a negative impact on your career, as your resume will start to look like you hit a wall in terms of capability and experience—not to mention the lost wages and other compensation you might have earned if you’d gotten the promotions you should have.

What you can do: You can, of course, look for another job and try to get that promotion by jumping to a new employer. If you want to stay at your current place and the advancement and title isn’t your priority, you could ask for a raise: Have a frank conversation with your boss and demand more money in lieu of that promotion. To make this work you’ll need an exit strategy that’s ready to go, however. Finally, you could explore a lateral move to a different group under a different manager—your current boss may not want to lose you, but they might be reluctant to openly torpedo a lateral move if another manager is involved.

Quiet promotion

A form of “job scope creep,” a quiet promotion is when you get a lot of new responsibilities without any title change or raise. You find yourself suddenly working on bigger projects, or managing extra accounts, or being handed more shifts—but you’re not getting any more money or benefits as a result. This usually happens when companies lose workers and redistribute their work rather than hire replacements.

What you can do: First, start documenting the extra work. Note extra hours, calculate how much more you’re doing in terms of shifts, accounts, projects—even the number of meetings and calls you find yourself handling. The more data you have showing that you’re doing the work of two people, or of a much more highly-placed employee, the better. Then, ask for a real promotion and/or raise. If that doesn’t get you anywhere, you can use all that data to revamp your resume and look for a new job.

Quiet firing

Just because someone got promoted into a managerial position or runs a business doesn’t mean they have the skill set or personality for confrontation. Sometimes your job screws you over because your boss wants you gone but is afraid to say so—so they turn to passive-aggressive tactics to make you quit. These can include giving you way more work than your peers, giving you projects beyond your skills and experience (and hoping you’ll fail), isolating you by making themselves—and other workers—inaccessible, or (worst of all) simply stripping you of your responsibilities and separating you from everyone else, leaving you to spend your days in boredom.

What you can do: It can be challenging to make a formal complaint or take legal action about being “quiet fired.” You can try talking to your boss to see if you can resolve the situation through discussion, you can obviously take the hint and look for a new job, or you could respond to a quiet firing by “quiet quitting” and enjoy the ride. But be careful: Review company policies and any sort of annual goals outlined for your position before you quiet quit to make sure you’re not setting yourself up for a much louder firing.

Verbal raises

Your boss promises you a raise as a reward for past performance or an enticement to step up your efforts or push through a difficult period. Then the raise never happens. Not only is all your extra effort not being recognized, but you were deceived, and if you made any financial plans based on the promise of a higher salary, you’re screwed.

What you can do: It’s difficult to take any legal action concerning verbal promises and oral agreements; while oral agreements can be enforceable in court, it usually requires the other party to acknowledge them and agree with your version of events, and at-will employers are free to change the details of your employment pretty much any time they want. Your best course of action when you receive any sort of undocumented promise is to document it yourself, immediately, and then try to get your manager to acknowledge it via email or in writing. You might also consider hiring an HR consultant to help you understand your options and craft letters and emails about the situation.

Wage theft

One of the most common ways jobs screw people over is wage theft—that is, when your employer fails to pay you according to their legal obligations. This can take many different forms—from being forced to pay for uniforms or equipment out of your own pocket, to being forced to work unpaid overtime, or not being informed of available benefits (or simply being denied access to benefits you were promised). It’s estimated that workers lose $50 billion in wage theft every year in the U.S.

What you can do: First and foremost, know what your compensation is supposed to be—both the promised wages and benefits and the local laws governing wages and other practices in your area. Second, pay attention: Review your pay stubs and make sure you’re being paid what you were promised. Third, document: If you notice discrepancies in your paycheck, or you’re asked to do uncompensated work, start keeping track—and keeping receipts. Contact your company’s HR department to see if you can get things straightened out; if not, contact the Wage and Hour Division of the Department of Labor to file a complaint.

Future restrictions

You applied, interviewed, and accepted the job—but did you really read all those onboarding documents you signed? Jobs often restrict not just your current activities in relation to work but your future activities as well in the form of noncompete agreements, nondisclosure agreements, and non-disparagement agreements. Woven together, these kinds of legal agreements can tie you down for significant periods of time after you leave your current job and make it challenging to find a new one—even if you leave on good terms. In other words, you might be screwed by your job in the future and not even know it.

What you can do: First, research the laws in your state. The Federal Trade Commission tried to ban noncompete clauses, but it’s been hung up in court—but many states have laws on the books limiting and regulating them, and noncompete agreements can be difficult to enforce. Non-disparagement and nondisclosure agreements have more teeth—your best move is to be aware of what you’re signing and think through the consequences of having your free speech limited for a period of time, and be willing to walk away from jobs that require it. If you’ve already signed one, familiarize yourself with what it says and brush up on the law—a non-disparagement agreement, for example, can’t prevent you from filing a worker’s compensation claim.

Bad performance reviews

Managers are just people, and people have different skill sets. Some managers are just bad at giving performance reviews—and that can really screw you over in terms of advancement, pay raises, and overall career development. A few common ways a bad manager can muck up your performance review include focusing on only the most recent weeks of your job performance instead of an overall evaluation of the past year, bringing personal bias into the evaluation, and surprising you with a laundry list of concerns that you’ve never heard of before.

What you can do: You can almost always add a response to a performance review before you sign off on it. Avoid angry or combative language and objectively rebut incorrect assessments, or provide context that your manager left out. You should also request a meeting with your supervisor to discuss the review—and stay calm while you do so. If you can convince your manager that they’ve made a mistake before the review is closed, you might be able to improve the situation.

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