Independent contractor gets better of his boss by just stating facts

An independent contractor is only obliged to do what's written in their contract, so when one man was slammed by an employer for not doing work outside of this, he made a pretty epic response.

Twitter user Caleb who goes by @BirdRespecter posted screenshots of a message exchange between himself and an employer where he was quizzed as to why he didn't attend a morning work meeting - a meeting he said wasn't a requirement to attend, according to his contract.

The first message from the employer asked Caleb why he didn't attend the morning meeting.

"Yeah dude I was asleep. I basically never join those," Caleb replied.

It seemed the employer was having none of it, and demanded he attended the next one, informing him: "Going forward, morning meetings are a requirement for employment at [redacted] I expect you to be on the next call tomorrow at 9AM EST."

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Though Caleb was quick to remind his employer that nowhere does it state in his contract that he is required to attend and wrote: "Man that sucks for you guys, but I'm not an employee. My contact says nothing about required hours or daily meetings."

Safe to say, the employer wasn't too pleased with this reply and began to warn Caleb of the consequences.

"You REALLY need an attitude adjustment! If you aren't on the next call, you're fired. Your choice."

But Caleb, with good reason, wasn't worried and made that clear in his response.

"You can fire me if you want but you guys have to pay me through the 18th of next month regardless so I'm definitely sleeping in tomorrow. Enjoy your meeting," with a thumbs-up emoji.

In another mic-drop moment, he added: "You guys really ought to read the contracts you have us sign sometime. Pretty wild stuff in there."

Clearly realising his warning backfired, the employer asked Caleb: "Please call me," to which the independent contractor replied: "No."

"Being an independent contractor sucks for a lot of reasons, but it also affords you the unique ability to tell people to f**k off in delightful ways," Caleb commented in a tweet along with the screenshots.

Since sharing the exchange, the independent contractor's tweet has gone viral, with 232,000 likes and over 24,000 retweets.

In a follow-up tweet, the employee made fun of his employers panicked message at the end with some funny memes.

Adding further context, he noted his employer doesn't work at the agency that handled his contract and explained: "They don't even run the department I was working in, and have no authority to fire me. Just a middle management nerd trying to be a cop."

After the tweet went viral, there was plenty of reaction on Twitter from people who shared their thoughts on the scenario, and many were glad to see Caleb stand up for himself.

In an update, Caleb informed his followers of another message he was sent by a different person in the company.

It read: "Hi Caleb. It's unfortunate that you won't return my phone calls. Upon internal discussion, it was determined that [redacted] had no authority to fire you.

"That stated, as we view it, your contract has not been voided and we're requiring you that you return to work as scheduled."

They then informed Caleb that he needs to finish a site installation by the end of the week and added after this is complete "we can mutually walk away from this."

Again, Caleb wasn't going to take this and made his feelings crystal clear in response and told the employer that he was informed that his contract was "terminated" and added: "So in regards to finishing, absolutely not."

Caleb described how the company's department is a "mess" and that employees "have no clue what they're doing."

Ending the exchange on a blunt note, Caleb concluded: "I have no interest in discussing this further. Don't text me again."

At the end of his Twitter thread, Caleb urged people to stand up for themselves at work and said: "Advocate for yourselves guys, you're worth it."

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