(At our office you get paid extra if the project is delivered early. This bonus is paid by the contractor and divided equally amongst the people who were working on the project. Employees are looking at pay-lists to confirm everything is okay before money gets paid.)

Employee: “Hey, why did [New Coworker] get a bonus? She only worked on the project for a week!”

Owner: “But she worked. Rule is that everyone who worked on the project get bonus divided between them equally.”

Employee: “But she barely did any work on it! It should be divided between the rest of us!”

Owner: “Leave it. You would only get [around 2 USD] more if I did that.”

Employee: “That’s bull-****. Everyone should get paid how much they deserve!”

Owner: *raising his eyebrows* “So you want to get paid by merit?”

Employee: “Yes!”

Owner: “I’ll get updated lists to you in 10 minutes, then.”

(Lists get handed out a bit later and employee is fuming.)

Employee: “WHY DID I GET ONLY [around 9 USD] INSTEAD OF [almost 200 USD] BONUS!?”

Owner: “I divided it by merit. [Best Programmer In The Office] did 80% of the back-end himself, so he got paid the most. Since you only worked on the interface, so you got paid by how much of the project you did.”

Employee: “You can’t do that! It’s illegal! I’ll sue you!”

Owner: “No, it’s not illegal. It’s a bonus that I hand out on my own will. Your basic pay stayed the same.”

Employee: “THEN I QUIT, YOU F****** A******!”

(Employee grabs his stuff and storms out. Boss proposes to going back to dividing project gain equally and everyone wholeheartedly agrees. Everything is fine until two weeks later when Employee storms back into our office and runs up to the boss.)

Employee: “WHERE IS MY MONEY!?”

Owner: “What are you talking about? You got your paycheck a day after you left. I was even so nice that I included the total bonus.”

Employee: “MY SEVERANCE PAY, YOU IDIOT! YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO GIVE ME AMOUNT EQUAL TO FOUR PAYCHECKS!”

Owner: “That’s the severance. I don’t have to pay you that. I only have to pay that to workers I FIRE myself, that haven’t breached the contract.”

Employee: “But you gave it to [Name] last month and he quit himself! You always pay people that!”

Owner: “That was my good will. Since we parted kindly I decided to “fire him” before he handed his resignation, so I “had to” pay him severance. I don’t legally have to pay you.”

Employee: “Umm, but I thought that…”

Owner: “You thought? No, you didn’t. What you did was quit a job that has 25% bigger base pay than average in your field, gives you bonuses for every project, pays for overtime twice as much as other companies in the same field, lets you choose what hours you work and tons of other extra stuff that I do to keep my workers happy since the company is doing well. Also, if you wanted to quit like normal people do instead of screaming and insulting me you would have gotten [Five Figure Sum], just because I can.”

Employee: “…”

Owner: “And you did this over the amount of money that can’t even get you a decent cup of coffee. Now get the f*** out before I call the police to remove you.”