A salaried employee says their workplace has stripped away nearly every responsibility associated with their job, hired someone to replace them, and removed them from company channels. There is just one problem: Management seems to keep “forgetting to fire” them. The employee, who posts under the Reddit username Sowhateves, described the unusual workplace situation in a post on r/careeradvice published Aug. 20, 2026. According to the post, the employee had recently told their manager they felt burned out after dealing with mandatory unpaid overtime and a heavy workload. Instead of reducing the workload or discussing additional resources, the employee said management began removing them from their normal responsibilities. According to Sowhateves, the company canceled all of their meetings, removed them from Microsoft Teams channels related to their position, and took away access to employee reports and records they had previously managed. It’s just one of many employee complaints online recently. A Victoria’s Secret employee walked away from her job after just two weeks. The employee also said the company hired a new worker and asked them to help train the person. In addition to training the new hire, the employee said they were also moved out of their office. Several coworkers allegedly contacted them to say, “Sorry to see me go.” Those changes led the employee to believe termination was imminent. However, their manager reportedly continued to say the employee would move to another team. I think my job keeps forgetting to fire me? byu/sowhateves incareeradvice That explanation created another problem. According to Sowhateves, the supposed new team did not know the employee was joining it and had no clear understanding of what their new role would involve. The employee said they repeatedly asked what they were expected to do but received little direction. At one point, they said their only assigned task required roughly one to two hours to complete. The employee continued reporting to work. Sowhateves said in their post that they kept showing up because they believed their activity was monitored and worried that failing to show up could give management a reason to terminate them. “I am getting paid,” the employee wrote. The employee also said they work in training and development for a medical device sales company and claimed the company had a history of pushing employees out rather than formally terminating them. The Redditor said they had already been searching for another job for about two months before the situation escalated. The employee also said they had communicated with managers and executives and attempted to schedule meetings about the situation multiple times. According to the post, several meetings never happened because managers became unavailable. The employee eventually stopped trying to schedule another meeting because it felt like “I was scheduling my own death.” The post also says the employee had accumulated about 300 hours of paid time off because of a hiring-related accrual error. The employee said they had begun using PTO while they still had access to company benefits. The situation raises a broader employment-law issue, although the Reddit post does not establish whether the employee has any legal claim. The U.S. Department of Labor says that receiving a salary does not by itself determine whether an employee qualifies for an overtime exemption. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, exempt status generally depends on the employee’s salary and specific job duties. For now, Sowhateves says they have decided to keep showing up, continue collecting their salary, and search for another job while waiting to see what management does next. The employee’s final update suggested they planned to keep a low profile after the post unexpectedly attracted thousands of reactions and said they would lock the discussion for privacy. In another viral employment story, a Missouri woman allegedly got fired from Walmart and took to the intercom to let everyone know how she felt about the store’s management.