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Contractor refuses to attend 'mandatory' meetings, people support his reasoning

"You want me on the clock, pay me."

Photo credit: Canva

Contractor refuses to attend mandatory meetings, people applaud.

Contractors are vital parts of many company structures. They allow people to come in with a particular expertise for a specific period of time, while still allowing the person the flexibility to continue being their own boss. This dynamic is one significant factor that distinguishes contractors from employees. Employees are beholden to company policies, time clocks, and mandatory obligations, while contractors generally are not.

This distinction is exactly why one contractor went viral in 2022, and is currently going viral again after the old X post resurfaced. The man was asked why he didn't attend a mandatory daily meeting via text message. His response has people cheering and reminding employers that their contractors are not actual employees.

contractor; employee; contractor refuses meeting; w2 employee; contractor vs employee Team collaboration and brainstorming session at the office.Photo credit: Canva

An employer-employee relationship isn't one-sided. In exchange for adhering to everything the company mandates, the employee is offered health insurance, paid time off, and the employer pays into Social Security and Medicaid for that employee, among other things. Employees are also protected from things like wrongful termination and are eligible to receive disability and family medical leave. Contractors don't have those same benefits and protections, which makes being a contractor more flexible, but also more risky.

Unfortunately, the company working with this contractor received a harsh reality check when they demanded that he attend daily morning meetings. While the text exchange seemed to come off as unprofessional to some people, the overwhelming majority appreciated the contractor drawing a clear line in the sand.

contractor; employee; contractor refuses meeting; w2 employee; contractor vs employee Man focused on his phone outdoors in casual attire.Photo credit: Canva

"Hi Caleb," the initial text starts. "I was just informed you weren't on the morning stand up call this morning. How come?" Caleb's response was bluntly honest, replying, "Yeah dude I was asleep. I basically never join those." That's when the exchange takes a turn. The incoming message tells the contractor that those meetings are a "requirement for employment" at the company. Except that Caleb is not an employee, he's a contractor. After he points out that these meetings are not in his contract, the manager doubles down and even threatens the contractor with termination if he refuses to attend the meetings.

You can read the full exchange here:

Caleb clarifies in the comments that the person threatening to fire him is not even presiding over his department, nor does he work for the company that managed the contract.

A few fellow contractors chimed in with their own stories. One person walked away from a year-long contract just a few weeks in: "As a contractor, I once got fired for not following dress code for the client company. They didn't realize I was 3 weeks into a 1 year contract, and it was 1 week past the grace period. I wasn't going to go business professional while working in a server room."

Another shares, "I was doing freelance work I said, 'I won’t be here Wednesday or Thursday.' He said 'oh, now employees get to choose when they come to work?' I said 'I’m not your employee, you’re my client. And please smoke your cigars outside or I won’t be back at all.'"

contractor; employee; contractor refuses meeting; w2 employee; contractor vs employee Team debate heats up, leaving one member stressed.Photo credit: Canva

"A lot of employers literally don't know that calling someone a contractor, yet trying to control how and where they do their work, is tax fraud," someone else writes. "You control the details of how someone works (hours, meetings, etc)? Then you are their employer and must deduct taxes."

One person who works in human resources backed up the man's stance, writing, "Haha! I work in HR, and I can’t believe how often I have to explain to managers that they cannot require contractors to come to meetings, be available from 9-5, etc etc etc. You’re paying for the work, not ownership of their time."

contractor; employee; contractor refuses meeting; w2 employee; contractor vs employee Office debate: exchanging ideas with passion.Photo credit: Canva

In another post that shared the exchange, one person explains, "If employers miscategorize their W2 employees as 1099 to avoid payroll taxes, health insurance, and retirement benefits, then 'contractors' should absolutely refuse to show up as employees. By law, an employer cannot demand a 1099 contractor to work at a specific time. Good for this guy! If companies expect people to act like employees, pay them like employees. It's also illegal."

Someone else went directly to the point: "You want me on the clock, pay me."

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A school insisted the girl students wear skirts. 3 girls fought the code in court — and won.

A North Carolina school required girls to wear skirts as part of their uniform. Two years ago, three female students decided to take a stand against the outdated code.

Keely Burks, 14, and the oldest of the three, created a petition asking her school to change its policy requiring the female students to wear skirts or risk punishment, which under the school’s policy could include calling parents, removing them from class and possibly expulsion. She herself had been punished for wearing shorts and was forced to “sit in the office all day” until her mother came to pick her up.

Burks explained that wearing skirts was a burden early on in her education. They kept her from sitting cross-legged like the boys, do cartwheels at recess or play soccer.

“My friends and I got more than 100 signatures on our petition, but it was taken from us by a teacher and we never got it back,” the eighth grader said in a post on the ACLU website. She continued by explaining that a few parents asked about changing the policy, but the school refused to hear them, claiming that making girls wear skirts promotes “chivalry” and “traditional values.”

The girls weren’t deterred. Instead of dropping the issue, they asked the ACLU to step in.

The human rights organization obliged, filing a lawsuit claiming the policy “violates the law and discriminates against girls.”

In their lawsuit, the group pointed out the obvious: that forcing girls to wear skirt was not only a distraction from academics, but also made it hard for them to engage in physical activity, sometimes resulting in discomfort and them being unnecessarily cold.

What gave the lawsuit weight was this is far from an isolated situation. Many girls across the United States are required to wear skirts as part of their school uniform.

However, the recent ruling on the ACLU’s case, courtesy of a North Carolina judge could change that.

“The skirts requirement causes the girls to suffer a burden the boys do not, simply because they are female,” wrote US District Judge Malcolm Harris on March 28 in response to the 2016 ACLU lawsuit against the Charter Day School in Leland.

“In the year 2016, I don’t think anyone should have a problem with young women wearing pants,” said Burks in the ACLU post. “There are so many professional women – businesswomen, doctors, and world leaders – who wear pants every day.”

Judge Harris found no merit to the school’s claims supporting the sexist uniform rules, slamming the policy in his ruling.

“The plaintiffs in this case have shown that the girls are subject to a specific clothing requirement that renders them unable to play as freely during recess, requires them to sit in an uncomfortable manner in the classroom, causes them to be overly focused on how they are sitting, distracts them from learning, and subjects them to cold temperatures on their legs and/or uncomfortable layers of leggings under their knee-length skirts in order to stay warm, especially moving outside between classrooms at the school,” he wrote. “Defendants have offered no evidence of any comparable burden on boys.”

While parents were supportive of the ruling, they were a little disturbed by the fact that getting the policy changed required an intervention by the legal system. “We're happy the court agrees," one of mothers, Bonnie Peltier, explained in a statement provided by the ACLU, "but it's disappointing that it took a court order to force the school to accept the simple fact that, in 2019, girls should have the choice to wear pants."

Hopefully this ruling will inspire other schools with similarly old-fashioned dress codes to reconsider their own policies, giving young women the same opportunities to dress as comfortably as their male counterparts. Gender equality may still have a long way to go, but giving young women the right to wear clothing on par with young men in 2019 should be a no-brainer.

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Humiliated by her school, this Pennsylvania teen found support from friends and strangers.

Like many 17-year-olds, Aniya Wolf was looking forward to her junior prom.

The Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, high school student was looking forward to dancing the night away with her best friends and classmates at the May 6, 2016, formal. Aniya, who has always preferred pants to dresses, even purchased a new suit with her mom for the special occasion.

Aniya on the day of her prom. Image via ABC News/YouTube.

But things went south when administrators from her Catholic high school, Bishop McDevitt, heard Aniya was planning to wear a suit to the dance.

The school informed Aniya and her mother that if she chose to wear the suit, she would be asked to leave. The conversations and messages, which took place just hours before prom, mentioned that the dress code was clearly stated in a previous note to parents. However, Aniya's mother, Carolyn Wolf, said the dress code never explicitly stated girls had to wear dresses.

Aniya reading over the e-mail and dress code from her school. Image via ABC News/YouTube.

Carolyn even sat down with the principal that afternoon, just to see if anything else could be done. And short of making her daughter wear a dress, there wasn't.

"I can't put a dress on her any more than I could put a dress on any of my sons," Carolyn told Today. "That's not who she is."

With the dance rapidly approaching, Aniya decided to go for it and attend prom anyway. She barely made it past the ticket line before she was asked to leave by school officials who went as far as threatening to call the police.

The experience was painful and embarrassing for the teen.

"I felt humiliated, getting kicked out of prom," she told Today. "I wasn't going to hurt anybody with a suit."

Aniya, who identifies as a lesbian, feels her school is singling her out because of her sexual orientation.

"It's saying, 'We don't want you in our prom. You're a freak of nature,'" she told Today.

Aniya after being asked to leave the dance. Image via ABC27 News.

It would be easy for Aniya to feel defeated, but people across the country have rallied behind her to show their support.

Women around the country donned suits and tuxedos and shared their photos using the hashtag #suitsforaniya.

Employees at Aniya's local chapter of the YWCA were some of the first to participate.

Double bassist Lauren Pierce showed off her dashing tux.

Professional soccer player Ashlyn Harris lent her voice to the effort.

And "It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia" creator Rob McElhenney even asked Aniya if she wanted a guest spot on the show.


But surely, one of the best reactions came from William Penn Senior High School.

Principal Brandon Carter invited Aniya and her date to the school's prom on May 21.

"We embrace all," he said in the invite.

It may not be the prom she had in mind, but hopefully it will be a fun, welcoming, night to remember.

Hear from Aniya and her mother about their experience in this short clip from ABC News.

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Have you ever worn leggings? Then you don't belong in class, says this Florida principal.

The biggest problem plaguing American high schools? Leggings, apparently.

Yesterday, a group of high schoolers were, um... I’m sorry. What was I saying? Oh yeah. So there’s this high school in Florida. They did ... this thing...

OK, this is getting embarrassing. I'm sorry, I'm just so distracted. I'm sure you understand.

You see, I'm writing this article from a coffee shop, and there are people wearing leggings here. LEGGINGS.

You know, those stretchy pants that people (mostly girls and women) wear on their legs. You may have heard about them in the news, because they've been scandalizing high school administrations across America.

Many schools insist that if girls wear leggings, their male colleagues — upstanding young citizens who would otherwise be diligently focused on their studies — will only be able to concentrate on their female classmates' bodies.

And yesterday, the curse of the distracting leggings struck again — this time, in Pensacola at Booker T. Washington High School.

A fed up student posted this photo on Facebook, which has been shared widely.

"Up until THIS MORNING we were allowed to wear leggings and without any prior warning every girl wearing leggings was sent to the office and they arent giving warnings, theyre SUSPENDING us for 10 days if we cant get a change of clothes or get checked out. Some of us CANT go home right now and how were we supposed to know anyway? They said we are a distraction for how we dress and we are taking away from people getting education. The only people who are getting their education taken away are the females. They said it was for boys in violation of dress code too, but there wasnt a single boy up there and I promise you there were just as many boys sagging their jeans as there were girls in leggings. Thank you for telling us that females actually arent equal to the males at Washington High School." — Amelia Martinez

According to students at the school, teachers were instructed to send all students wearing leggings to the principal's office. "Yesterday morning our principal came over the PA system. He began to talk about dress code, focusing mainly on the female body," a Washington student, Alexsys McClellan, told Upworthy.

"He told every teacher to send whoever was wearing leggings to him or the dean," she added.

An estimated 80 female students were pulled from class for wearing leggings.

Can you believe it? There were that many distractions, just walking around the school in front of everyone — "distractions" who were going to class, reading books, perhaps even studying for the SAT.

Some of the students had to call their parents and ask them to bring a change of clothes to the school. "We were there for over an hour just to deal with wearing leggings," another student told the Pensacola News Journal.

Washington High Principal Michael Roberts spoke to local radio show 1620 News Radio about the incident. "Today, sir, there was no change in the dress code. There was just enforcement of the dress code," he said. You can hear the rest of the interview here.

Within hours of the announcement, students began posting on Facebook about their disappointment with the school's decision — and they decided to take action.

"This is honestly way more distracting than leggings. That has been the only thing we have been talking about in every class," wrote one student, who should maybe consider a future career in school administration.

"I'm tired of having to change my life around to fulfill the needs of men," another girl posted. "I wake up every morning to come to a school to learn."

One student even created a Change.org petition, and McClellan wrote a letter to the school board.

The double standard is not lost on students at Washington High School. Photo by Alexsys McClellan, used with permission.

And women aren't the only ones calling out the administration. McClellan said lots of male students at Washington aren't too happy with the idea that girls should be held to different standards either.

"I'm very proud of them and how they've come together and helped us girls," she said.

"What's really distracting?" Photo by Alexsys McClellan, used with permission.

"The issue is important because we do not want to live in a society anymore where women are judged and lowered because of their gender," she said.

We couldn't have said it better ourselves, Alexsys.

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