Workers around the United States constantly encounter capitalist practices of negotiating labor and payment for their services. This long-standing practice pushes industries forward and helps people respond to inflation and shifting markets. But what if a system underwrote the value of nearly all its workers, creating a climate of fear, hidden agendas, and pervasive labor misconduct? In this presentation, I share ethnography from fieldwork among a specific niche community of music educators in the marching arts. These workers, despite their extensive experience, education, and efforts face complex negotiations with compensation. A systematic proclivity toward late payments, abused contracts, egregiously low compensation, and flat out free labor begs the question: how do programs continually get away with treating instructors this way? I explore this question through scholarship across disciplines and the voices of interlocutors fighting for their worth in an industry that rarely gives as much as it takes.