Example Of Essay On My Experience With Job Discrimination

One of my first workplace experiences proved to be very negative and simultaneously quite enlightening, in that I learned several hard lessons. I was offered a job at a local college. The position was classified as part-time; my supervisor explained that because of state funding issues, the position could not be full-time and so there were no employee benefits such as health insurance. Per my supervisor’s instructions, I could work up to 35 hours a week but could not report any more hours per week than that number. In retrospect, it is easy to see that the word “report” should have been a red flag to me, but at the time it was not.
During the first couple of weeks, my supervisor Laura and I established my daily routine. She wanted me there roughly seven hours a day, but she also wanted me to be flexible enough that if a project was on a tight deadline, I could work extra hours one day and then fewer hours another day. I agreed but quickly discovered that almost every week had an “urgent” project that required me to work extra hours the first few days of the week, with the result that often I would reach my 35-hour weekly limit by noon on Friday, and occasionally I would need to work only two hours on Friday to reach the limit.
This situation continued for a couple of months, and I was fine with it. I was working 35 hours a week and being paid for 35 hours a week. However, a major change soon occurred. During the two months I had worked there, I had interacted a few times with my supervisor’s boss, who was a vice president of the college. Most of the work I was doing went directly to his desk, and he signed off on it. He came into my office one Thursday to chat about my future at the college. He stated that he wanted to make me full-time as soon as possible, but we would have to wait until the next fiscal year began and a new budget was implemented. He expressed great admiration for my work and thought I could rise very rapidly in the executive branch of the college. I was obviously both flattered by his remarks and pleased that my prospects at this college seemed so bright.
The following day was another Friday on which I would reach my 35-hour limit around noon. However, at 11:00, the vice president came into my office for another chat, this one a bit briefer than the one the preceding day. He had a project that required my skills to complete, but it had slipped his mind until today and was due on Monday. He asked if I would mind, just this once, staying a few hours extra and completing this job for him. He also said that obviously I could not report more than my allotted 35 hours a week, but he would keep my “volunteer work” in mind when a new full-time position became available. I agreed, and I am embarrassed to admit now that I was so naïve at the time, I did not foresee what would happen next.
The “one-time” request became a weekly request. Every Friday morning a new project would hit my desk, with a deadline of Monday morning. The only thing that changed was the scope of the project. After a few months of this pattern, the projects I was supposed to be doing on a “volunteer” basis became large enough that I had to come in on the weekends to complete them by the Monday morning deadline. About once a month, the vice president gave me a pep talk to let me know how much he appreciated my commitment to my job and the extra effort I put into it. He remarked more than once that previous employees in my position had not worked out because they did not exhibit the same commitment to the job that I did. I kept telling myself that sooner or later the extra work would pay off, when I would be rewarded with a full-time position. However, part of me kept thinking that I was now routinely putting in 45 hours a week, sometimes more, and being paid only for 35 hours week.
During this time what kept me going without complaining to anyone about the discrepancy between my hours worked and hours paid was the implied job offer. The new fiscal year came and with it came a new job posting for a full-time position in the office. I applied for the full-time position but did not receive an offer. The vice president took me aside to say that he appreciated my application but he did not feel this was quite the right position for me, but if I would be patient a little more, the right position would become available. By this time, I was more than a little disillusioned but still had some hope that everything would work out.
Then came a very eye-opening experience. As part of yet another project, I had to work closely with a few employees from another department. One of them was like me, a part-time employee, and also limited to 35 hours a week. She also was routinely asked to work extra “volunteer” hours, and had been given the same speech about how valuable her work was and how her extra work would be rewarded eventually with a full-time position. She had documented the extra hours she had worked for close to a year; at roughly ten extra hours a week, she had a little over 500 hours for the year that she had worked and for which she had not been paid. That discussion made me realize that my situation was not unique, and that if two of us had a similar experience, there were probably more part-time employees who had been tricked into unpaid work by someone dangling a job prospect over them.
Initially I was unsure what to do. I began pursuing other job opportunities and within a few weeks had been offered and accepted a full-time position elsewhere, complete with a benefits package and at a salary level significantly higher than my existing job was paying me. With the security of having a new job in place, I submitted my resignation and included in it that I felt I had been exploited into working additional hours for which I was not paid, and that I had been extremely dismayed to discover that another employee had a similar experience.
In retrospect, that year was a good learning experience for me because it taught me there are employers who will treat employees unfairly. I did receive some moral satisfaction from my departure; within two weeks after my last day, the other employee that I had mentioned in my resignation letter was offered a full-time position and a retroactive pay increase contingent upon her not filing any official complaints about her wages. On a long-term basis, the down side is that I felt stupid for not recognizing what was happening sooner and I obviously will never have a reference from that vice president. Those consequences are ones I have learned to accept as the price for reduced gullibility.