This sounds like a really wild solution without a problem. The employee can just turn off their phone today, or put it on do not disturb, or simply ignore the

This sounds like a really wild solution without a problem. The employee can just turn off their phone today, or put it on do not disturb, or simply ignore the texts when not working. The boss could say "you need to reply to these texts or you will be fired", just like they could say "You need to take me off your $9.95 delivery list or you will be fired". Also, is the point here that the employee will be happy to work outside of working hours if they are paid $9.95? If they get overtime they should be paid it based on the hourly overtime rate & policies for their role, not some strange one-time fee that their cellular provider collects for them.