Bad Bosses·
THE ACCIDENTAL EMAIL
An NC worker receives a misaddressed email exposing a boss's harsh critique of moonlighting, raising a salary-vs-hours clash and leaving the employee to weigh loyalty against fairness.
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"what the fuck? Is this legal?" That was the question after a North Carolina worker opened an email that was never meant for them, one that seemed to spell out their boss's real thoughts about a second job.
The poster says they were bringing home "800 a week take home," not enough to comfortably live on, so they picked up extra work with a family member on their own time. It was not during their salaried hours, they said, but in the gaps outside the day job.
Then came a payroll problem. Their employer used ADP, and the company had been having trouble getting them properly set up in the system. The poster emailed their boss to ask what might be causing the issue.
The reply that landed in their inbox changed the conversation completely.
Instead of a simple payroll fix, the poster says they received an email the boss had apparently intended for the business partner. In it, the boss complained about the poster working another job. The message said the poster should be moved to hourly pay if they had "free time" to work elsewhere. It also claimed that "another certain employee can do more for the company than I."
The poster says the email was an accident, sent to them instead of the other boss, but the content was impossible to unsee.
What made the message sting even more was the timing. The second job was not happening on company time. The poster stressed that they "did not work at my 2nd job during the working hours of my salary position. Only in my free time."
There was one more twist buried in the complaint: the employee the boss seemed to have in mind as a better replacement also reportedly had two jobs.
So the poster was left with a blunt question. Could the boss really move them off salary over work done only off-hours? Could a salaried employee be targeted for moonlighting that never interfered with the main job?
All of that came wrapped inside one accidental email, a message meant for someone else, but delivered straight to the person being discussed.