Oh, yeah putting off discussing those things is another tactic people like that use.

My ex boss promised me a bonus if I arranged an international alliance with a company. I set up something where we got free advertising on a website for an important trade fair in the industry in exchange for covering the fair in our newsletter. He called it an alliance and even had the journalist write a note about it for our website.

The next time we had a group meeting, he said we should issue our tax receipts to get paid, so I said, "should I include the bonus for the alliance?" His face turned all red, and in front of everyone he said it didn't count, he meant something like an alliance with a local govenment organizations. He gave examples, but they were all programs for small businesses where you can apply to contests or programs, but you can't just call them up and set up some sort of alliance. So, basically, he changed the rules to where there was no way he would pay the bonus and tried to make me think I had misunderstood. I know what he said.

Then he stuttered and said maybe he could pay me something for what I had done, like he was doing me a favor. I tried to talk with him after the meeting and he evaded me saying he had somewhere to be. The next two meetings he did the same, completely avoided me, ran out of the meetings as soon as they ended to avoid talking to me! After that I quit, so I never did discuss it with him.

It wasn't even that much money. He paid 10 times more to a pastry chef for each one-hour demonstration at some events the company held. In the evaluations atendees filled out, people didn't even like the demonstrations because the guy refused to bring an assistant or do the type of prep work like they do on cooking shows, measuring and chopping things beforehand, so the pace was very slow and people got bored.