God that makes me livid. I was fully brainwashed by television and films in the 90s showing hardworking loyal people getting rewarded by the companies they worked for. I showed nothing but loyalty with every position. I have never once seen that loyalty pay off in any meaningful way. If I busted my ass all weekend working 40 hours overtime it was "what was needed to get the job done". No thank yous, and I got fucked out of at least 75% of my overtime pay throughout my whole life (anytime it was self reported overtime). Any reason management could think of to pay me as little as possible seemed to be the norm. I've never gotten a raise when it was promised. I've always started at a wage that left me with the bear minimum to survive, as my position in interviews was "pay me what you think is fair". I've never been able to accrue any meaningful savings, I've never gone on vacation, and I've lived at home my entire life (thought I'd be able to buy a house/condo, ha). The only thing I've ever been able to afford was a car, largely just to get to work and back.
I'm largely talking about working for "AMPM Services", a point of sale support company with locations across Canada. They treated me like hot garbage and replaced me with a recent hire with 20 years industry experience when our company had a contract expire. They knew when they got the contract it was for a limited time, and chose to let me think that I had a safe full time position. Fuckers made me train him. I worked for them through a period of hell when we were down to a skeleton crew (people kept quitting) putting in unpaid OT to the tune of 80 hour workweeks, with 14 days scheduled in a row sometimes. Almost none of that OT, was I paid for. They said I "submitted the OT forms too late, and they couldn't charge the client now". Which was weird because they knew when i started and ended each call via a call center we'd report in too. I'd run calls on my days off, or after my shifts, when I wasn't working. I tried so hard, SO FUCKING HARD, to keep that job. I could go on but I doubt many people are even reading this far.
I didn't mean to make this a rant but, well, here we are.
TL;DR I showed nothing but loyalty and got thrown in the gutter as payment. Company couldn't have given less fucks about me.