No one wants to be taken advantage of, in any aspect of life. However, when your boss is the culprit, it can be even more frustrating than other situations. Part of the manager’s job is making sure you, the employee, is being treated fairly, so this isn’t something you should suffer in silence! Here are a few signs that your boss may be taking advantage of you…

You’re Expected to Work Overtime, All the Time!

Nothing is static in business, and sometimes a particularly busy week or some kind of mishap can throw everything into the air, and present the need for employees to work overtime. However, this doesn’t mean that you should lay down every time your boss asks you to work overtime! If you’re paid by the hour, and your boss is constantly asking you to work overtime without compensating you fully for those hours, then they’re certainly taking advantage of you, and could be breaking some laws. If you work for a small company, it may just be that you’re a dependable worker, and your boss is so busy they don’t realise what they’re doing. This is a pretty common problem which consultancies like Ellis Whittam regularly have to deal with.

You’re Expected to Do Several Jobs

The requirements and job duties of any given job title can change fairly regularly. Therefore, you can’t expect your job to only ever entail the duties which were included in the original listing you applied for.

However, if someone’s left the company or been fired at short notice, and you’re expected to cover their role as well as your own, then your boss is definitely taking advantage.

If this is happening to you, be sure to talk to your boss and get them to acknowledge the situation. If it’s only temporary, then that’s no big deal. However, if they consistently expect you to cover the other person’s job, with no real end in sight, something needs to change immediately!

You’re Never Appreciated

Okay, it’s not really a requirement for a boss to offer verbal praise. Everyone’s different, and some managers are going to be more inclined to praise you for your hard work than others.

Still, if you have a boss who’s always piling on work, and never offering any positive feedback, despite the quality and consistency of your work, this can be a subtler mark that they’re taking advantage of you.

If they never say anything in the way of appreciation, or are overly critical even when you know you’re doing the work well, it’s obviously going to grind down your morale, and could affect your ability to even come into the office and get stuck into your workload.

While you couldn’t take your boss to court for behaving like this, it’s certainly not something you should put up with for too long.

If you have a boss who never says a word of appreciation, and doesn’t show any signs of changing, then I recommend getting on some job sites and looking for a way out!

This post has been contributed by Ryan Gatt, it may contain affiliate links.