Context: I am 19 years old working at a large southeast chain grocery store, and I was hired in April 2021. At the time, the state minimum wage was $11.75, but I started at $12 as a customer service lead. I was promoted to office assistant in October 2021, with all of the accompanying responsibilities and raise (or so I thought). My boss (B) had told me she had officially promoted me after I finished training for my new position, and I could see on my schedule that I was indeed promoted as I was listed as the store's office assistant (which is basically assistant manager-lite, I help out with running the front end of the store and in the cash office, and there are a few other people who have this position). She had said that because she “changed my position in the system”, it also “calculated my raise and I'd have to check in the system to see what exactly it promoted you to”, which she NEVER got around to. (SEVERAL of my coworkers have had issues with this manager, such as verbal abuse, passive aggressiveness, unprofessionalism, etc). However, I'm unable to see my “new” wage on the schedule's app and I can't log in to the company's HR site so I can access my own payroll information unless I'm at the store and on the clock, which I never get a chance to do because of how short-staffed we are + the fact they make me clock out asap to avoid me having too many hours, and I can't access the info I need to see my new wage without being on the clock. The new year comes and my state's minimum wage is raised to $12.50/hr and I'm still left in the dark as to how much I'm actually making now for a long-ass time, literally until today.
Today at work though, it was very slow this morning and when the assistant manager D came in, she had told me to see if I had to do any training programs for the month, so I went on the computer to check. The program wouldn't load, but on the same page were some instructions for employees on how to see their paystubs. The combination of curiosity, privacy and the boredom of working a slow day in a grocery store leads to me learning my “new” wage that was on last week's paystub, which was dead set at $12.50 an hour. And what's worse is that on that paystub and under my employee information elsewhere on the site, I was still listed as a customer service lead and my payrate was also listed as $12.50 an hour. So I'm kind of livid because I feel like it's a slap in the face to go back to being minimum wage when the state's law changed, as all of my responsibilities are far beyond what the other positions being paid that much have to do, and the fact that manager B essentially lied to me about “promoting me” because I'm still listed as my previous position and I'M MAKING MINIMUM WAGE! Despite the fact I'm busting my ass off in my new position! I had talked to D about it and she was like “yeah, that does not sound right at all, you need to talk to B about this when you see her again because I can't really do anything about that”. B was off today but she's working with me tomorrow and I want to talk this over, but I don't really know what to say or how to stand up for myself effectively because she's pretty intimidating and I'm autistic and can find it hard to express myself when I'm stressed, which happens when I have to communicate with her because she can be difficult and rude. I just kind of need some guidance on how to handle this, tbh I was already planning on quitting for a whole host of other reasons but I would like some help for tomorrow.