a few years ago i worked in a shitty little retail shop that was owned by two brothers i never met that lived in another state (the company owned a chain of these stores across 2 or 3 states, there were maybe 4 or 5 total stores). we used this ipad in a stand to clock in and out. you had to take a picture of yourself every time, which i despised. i had been there for maybe 7 months or so when one day i decided to look at the app that was like the user version of the app from the ipad. it had a record of all of my in and out times... and a record of every time they had been edited.

and edited they had been. every single shift, one of the two owners was shaving off between 1 and 15 minutes from clock out time. i brought it up with my manager, who i got along really well with, and got him to look at his. same thing. my other coworker, same thing. i went home and made a spreadsheet containing every single time it had happened for as far back as the records went. it ended up being something like $400 worth of time they had taken from me.

the next day i got a call from that owner, and he explained to me that he felt like i was taking too long to close the store, that it shouldn't take that long, and that he was sorry (sorry that he got caught!) and was going to add $200 to my next paycheck (half of what he stole), plus from now on all clock in and out times would be rounded to the nearest quarter hour, and asked me if that made it better.

i was in a pretty bad place at the time, financially and mentally, and for as terrible as that job was i did also kind of like it, and didn't think i could find anything better, so i accepted the money and the apology and let it go.

anything like that ever happened to you? did you do anything cooler than roll over like i did?

  • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]
    ·
    11 months ago

    A criminally underpaid friend of mine had this happen (has an advanced med-adjacent degree, works in a lab, practically runsthe place but still makes like two steps above poverty wages).

    iirc it was a coworker, not even the owner, and she was editing their times just enough so that they never got paid for the multiple hours of overtime they were doing each week. They did report it up the chain and got all of it paid back, but she wasn't even fired... They should have quit after that but they still haven't

    • g_g [she/her, comrade/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      11 months ago

      yuck. imagine thinking your coworker doesn't deserve their overtime pay and that it is just of you to take it from them, to no benefit of your own. visible-disgust

      • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]
        ·
        11 months ago

        yeah she sounded unhinged I really don't get it. she might technically outrank them but I don't think she's even their supervisor...