I worked for Tandy as tech support at one of their computer centers in the early 80's. Pay was minimum wage plus a percentage of the entire store's sales, so I was doing fairly well.

Then IBM came out with their PC. Sales plummeted. I was living on little more than minimum wage. Most of the support people at other stores quit. The District Manager had me take over their customers as well as mine.

I met with the DM and explained to him that I could barely afford to pay for the gas to get to work, never mind drive to other customers. I asked for a percentage of the other stores sales, which seemed fair.

Nope. He wouldn't do it. I walked out. No notice. I started my consulting business then and picked up quite a few of the abandoned customers. I had nothing to lose and it turned into a 33 year business that let us live quite well.