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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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The 91-yr-old founder and president of Bob's Red Mill might just be the world's best employer

Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods/Facebook

Bob Moore just turned 91—a fact that will leave your jaw on the floor when you see a video of him in action. Though he handed over the title of CEO two years ago, Moore still works full-time as president of Bob's Red Mill Natural Foods, the company he founded with his now deceased wife, Charlee, in 1978.

Moore was 49 when they started the company—an inspiring example for those of us who worry it's too late to start something new in middle age. The couple channeled their love of natural foods and whole grains into a continually growing business, which has not only spelled success for the company, but for its employees as well.

Just three years into the business, Moore started a profit-sharing plan for employees. As the business grew, so did the employee pay outs.

"I wanted everyone to share in the profits of the company. It has increased paychecks by a nice amount," Moore told CNN. "I'm more proud of that than anything."

Moore has had ample opportunity to sell the business, but has always declined. In 2010, Moore's executive assistant Nancy Garner told Oregon Live that buyout offers were coming in almost daily, but Moore wanted nothing to do with them, preferring to transfer the company's value straight to his employees.

"These people are far too good at their jobs for me to just sell it," said Moore.

Moore's says his treatment of employees comes straight from the so-called Golden Rule in the Bible—"Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." As an employee, he told CNN, he would want a stake in the company. That's why he created an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP), which holds stocks in a trust for employees rather than putting them out to be bought and sold. He officially handed full ownership of Bob's Red Mill to workers in 2010.

Any employee with at least three years tenure is fully vested in the program and will receive their stake in cash five years after they quit or when they retire. Moore keeps the company's value private, but public data shows it has grown substantially in the past two decades. Employee count has tripled since 2010, and the company confirmed to CNN that it did more than $50 million in revenue in 2018. Another 2018 estimate put Bob's Red Mill at more than $100 million in revenue. Either amount means a handsome payout for Moore's 600+ employees.

"This is Bob taking care of us," employee Lori Sobelson told Oregon Live. "He expects a lot out of us, but really gives us the world in return."

While we would all love to have a boss like Bob Moore, most of us would also love to have his sharp mind and youthful energy at his age. Check out this video of him at 90 years old talking about his company, and be prepared to make him your new #aginggoals icon.

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It turns out all that time spent surfing YouTube videos may actually pay off.

Next time you're caught browsing YouTube at work, tell your boss it was in the name of productivity.

People freakin' love funny Internet videos.

They're one of the things that make the internet so wonderful, and at tens or even hundreds of million views for some of the most popular ones, it's pretty clear that I'm not alone in this assessment.

Well, it turns out that watching them might also make you a better worker.

GIF from HDCYT/YouTube.

Watching funny videos actually improves people's ability to focus, according to two scientists at the University of New South Wales.

Psychological scientists David Cheng and Lu Wang found that people who watched a funny video clip would spend, on average, twice as long working on a mundane assignment than people in a control group who spent the same amount of time watching videos that weren't funny.

In other words, as the scientists wrote in the Journal of Business and Psychology, "Exposure to humor may increase the effectiveness of employees."

And what better way for a quick dose of humor than a short video?

Honey badger don't care. GIF from czg123/YouTube.

Not only does watching funny videos make people more productive, the study even found that a particular type of humor has the largest effect on persistence.

That type of humor is called "self-enhancing humor," and while the name sounds boring and science-y, all it means is the type of humor that lets you laugh at yourself and the absurdities of the world around you while keeping a positive attitude.

Jon Stewart's return to "The Daily Show" included some self-enhancing humor: his joke about being without his old platform while trying to do good for others. GIF from Comedy Central/YouTube.

Other styles include affiliative (humor aimed at enhancing relationships), self-defeating (humor at the expense of yourself, to your own harm), and aggressive (humor that makes fun of other people, usually using lots of sarcasm).

An example of affiliative humor would be one of Jerry Seinfeld's stand-up bits in which the audience can all come together to relate to the observation he's making.


GIF from "The Tonight Show."

Rodney Dangerfield was the king of self-defeating humor. He made himself the punchline of his own jokes. Unlike self-enhancing humor, there's no sunny side to this. It's put-down humor, just directed at oneself.

GIF from Classic Comedy Bits #2/YouTube.

Joan Rivers made a career of aggressive humor. It's also known as put-down or insult humor. One of the more unfortunate examples was the below clip of her implying that President Obama is gay.

GIF from TMZ.

But this info isn't exactly new. We've long known that happier people are more productive people.

A little chemical called dopamine is responsible for how happy you're feeling, and as we've written before, you don't get happy by achieving success — you achieve success by being happy.

A dopamine-rich brain is 31% more productive than one running low on the chemical. How do you increase your dopamine levels? Suggestions have included writing down things you're grateful for, journaling about positive experiences, meditating, and "spreading the happy" through positive communication. But yes, you can also (drumroll, please) watch a funny video to get your brain going!

GIF from Allison Chambers/YouTube.

So go ahead, give it a try! Whether you're into Monty Python or Bad Lip Reading, a funny video fix might just be the key to your success.

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