TLDR I quit my job in March, then in April I was contacted by a special investigator from the department of labor who asked a lot of questions related to wage theft. Now 6 months later, I got an email from my ex-employer asking if I can come in on Wednesday at 11a to pick up my check.
So a quite bit of context, I worked for a company for a week shy of a year before I quit. When I started, I absolutely loved the job, I do early invention autism care, and this company was new (4yrs), with a unique take on autism care. I still think their structure and vision for the company are amazing, however, I realized that like most companies in this space, the owners are only in it for the money. After a few months, I had been promoted to one of the lead positions for the direct care team, and while in this position I had 12 staff under me in my classroom. I got my sister a job working in another classroom, and by the end, I was driving her and 4 other staff to work every day. I loved my co-workers.
Well before this, the company exhibited some shady practices that I basically ignored (threats of termination for talking about pay, saying you won't be paid if you don't submit your notes, rumors about not paying out OT, etc.). I was always quick to point out to my carpool when the company would make stupid statements or policy changes, that they can't actually follow through with most of their threats, unless they want to open themselves up to a lawsuit.
What should have been the biggest red flag, was the fact that it was a pain in the ass to record your hours. There was literally a fourm that would take 5+ minutes to fill out, depending on what clients you worked with, for how long, what additional therapies they may have had that day, what you did when you were without a client, who approved those tasks, when you went on break, who covered your break, who else worked with your client and more. I would keep a notebook in my back pocket to keep track of all the information I needed to put on my time sheet. I constantly forgot to submit timesheets, but I always had my notebook to back up my time, and our payroll specialist was great. I would message her every two weeks about missing timesheets, and 99% of the time I would tell her what I recorded in my notebook and she would manually adjust ADP. There were a however more than a handful of times that I forgot to note times in my notebook, and I would just tell her the hours my client was there and then add 20 minutes for notes (which is the amount of time allowed by the company to complete your session notes, classroom cleaning chore, and timesheet)
In October, the company started experiencing a lot of difficulties retaining new hires, and we were continually training new people who would immediately quit, or just not show up for their first day solo. Things began getting very stressful very fast after October. With all of the increased training, many trainers found themselves working off the clock in order to complete their normal responsibilities as well as training notes for their trainees. Normally, we would have 1-2 trainees in a classroom over a month, but we now had closer to 6-8. We had more people training than trainers, so it was common to see a training staff trying to train 2 people at the same time. Every trainer would have to complete an assessment for their trainee each day, and then submit it into a group chat on a company messenger app that had all of the trainers and admin included.
I was working off the clock daily, because at the time, I felt if I did not show up early, things would not get done, and those things would be detrimental to quality of care/treatment for our clients. I show up at 7:15 or earlier to set up my classroom activities, update schedules, prepare snacks, and then make sure all of my staff were accounted for before client drop-off at 7:45a. I wasn't scheduled to work until 7:40a. I was also required to send a morning and evening message to my staff to relay information/policy changes from the administration team, remind them about important events, and then try to hype them up with praise for their efforts, which was impossible to do while the clients were still there, so that was done off the clock too.
In January, they cut back the cleaning crew hours to twice a week, and asked that the classroom leaders delegate the buildings cleaning tasks to our staff to be done at the end of each day. However, when the staff under us would neglect their new cleaning responsibilities, the leads would get repremanded by admin for it being left undone. Then they got rid of our part-time staff who acted as lunch coverage, and leaving the lead staff to cover staff breaks, which cut 4-6 hours out of my day to work on other parts of my job that go along with being a teacher, like lesson prep, cleaning after activities, leading groups, etc. And I would have to delegate parts of my job to staff who were free if I was unable to do my job as classroom lead, because of the client I was covering. I watched as my staff began to resent me for making them do parts of my job, and I hated it.
I had always been very vocal to the administration and owner about any problems that I saw, and witnessed them make big changes in response to my concerns. I went to the owner in February to express concerns about staff burnout, as I had been told by numerous staff that they were looking for new jobs, as well as felling stretched to my own limit with all of the changes, and she suggested that I step down from my position. I was beyond hurt, and I responded with my resignation letter, giving three weeks notice. Three weeks was standard as requested in our contracts, and the exiting leads would train their replacement over the first two weeks then pretty much step back from their duties to a minimum on week three so the new lead can take over, but still get help if needed. Rather than letting me finish out my time in my position, they immediately switched me to act as coverage for sick staff for the entire building, except my classroom. I was pissed, but I made the most of my situation. I enjoyed getting to meet and hang out with new clients each day. Over the first week, I learned a lot about the company and the owner from employees who had been there for a long time, and from former co-workers I still kept in touch with. A lot of them told me the owner was a compulsive liar, which was starting to become pretty evident based on what I was learning.
In the middle of the second week while working with a client, the owner sent another staff to cover me so we could have a meeting. In the meeting, she feigned concern for me when she told me she asked me to step down for concerns over my mental health, she lied to me about things she didn't think I knew, she made BS excuses for keeping employees when they had committed fireable offenses, and she made excuses about her reasoning for keeping clients that we ethically should not be treating them (former staff got knocked up by client's dad, owner didn't know I knew). She asked what she could do to keep me, and I told it was far too late for that. I asked that she at least let me work in my old room, with my old clients for my last week, and she told me to be glad they were giving me hours at all and then she said “I was just trying to be nice by giving you some hours, we don't need you.” I then went back to my client, and throughout the remainder of the day, I said my goodbyes to all of the clients and my co-workers. The next day when I didn't show up, the owner reached out to me directly to say they were short staffed, and I was supposed to be there to provide coverage, but I reminded her that she didnt need me. It felt great to make that lying bitch eat her own words.
Fast forward a month or so, and seemingly out of nowhere, a special investigator from the department of labor calls me to ask questions about my former employer, and it became clear very quickly that they are under investigation for wage theft and possibly other charges. I called my sister who left around the same time as I did and found she was also contacted by the same investigator the day prior. Neither of us hear anything until in July when I ran into one of my old staff. She tells me that's she is in my old position, but is looking for a new job because it's too much. I told her I had been contacted by the DOL and immediately she looked as if she'd had an
epiphany. She told me the company had the lawyers in all week and the staff was told they were being audited by an insurance company. Last week, another one of my old carpool told me she found a new job and that during her last week with the company, they admitted they were under investigation by the DOL.
All this brings me to 5pm this past Friday when I received an email from the payroll specialist asking if Wednesday at 11a would work for me to come in and pickup my check. What check? For what? I never had a paper check while working there, why now? How much is it for? So many questions, so I called my sister, and she said she just got the same email, same date and time. Am I wrong to think this is incredibly shady? Are they trying to get me in some trap/payoff? I've decided that I'm going to call the DOL Monday morning to see what they say, but I'm curious what you all think.