Some bosses just don’t care about their employees. Some don’t even care about their customers. Put them both together and you get this story told by KryptKat. At least this boss gets what’s coming to him.
“So, I was working at a 7-Eleven for just shy of a year. The store was a franchise, so it was independently owned by a guy who’s IQ was probably somewhere in the 80s. He treated us all like dirt. The only person who made more than minimum wage was the useless clerk he was cheating on his wife with, who, for some reason, made $15 an hour.
This guy never did anything by the book. If he thought it would make him more money, then the law didn’t apply to him. Nobody at the store ever got a lunch break. We were barely afforded smoke breaks. We weren’t allowed to eat while on the clock. In California, when you work more than 5 hours without lunch, you’re supposed to get paid an extra hours worth of wages, which counts toward overtime. We didn’t get that, either. On top of that, when he did payroll, he wouldn’t actually go by when you clocked in and out, he went by the schedule he wrote. So if you stayed an extra hour or two to help out when it got busy, you’d be working for free, because the hours wouldn’t show up. Also, your schedule was subject to change whenever he felt like it. There were several times he wrote me up for showing up late because he would change my shift without telling me.
So, here’s where the trouble starts. We would take expired food off the shelves. But, we’d come in the next day, and he had printed new expiration dates, pasted them on top of the old ones, and put the food back on the shelves. This happened consistently the entire time I worked there. Well, one day, I’d had enough of his bull. I called up the health department and reported him, then emailed corporate and filled them in on what was going on.
Well, word got back to him. When I went in the next day, I’d received a ‘complaint’ and was promptly fired. I don’t know about you, but I’ve never worked anywhere with a one-strike policy.
Here’s the thing, though. Since the day I started there, I’d been keeping records. I had copies of every schedule posted, and every pay stub I’d ever received. I went to the labor board that day and picked up the paperwork I needed. See, when you don’t get lunches, and you don’t get paid the extra hour you’re supposed to, the labor board can force the employer to pay you the money he owes you in one lump sum. So I filled out the paperwork and turned it in. My old boss wasn’t so smug when he had to make a check to me for $2,600 right after receiving a hefty fine from the health department.
Now, I’m working to get the labor board to force him to hire me back under the whistleblower clause. If he has to re-hire me, he also has to pay me back lost wages for the past few months. Also, my old co-workers get lunches now.”
