I will preface this by saying I've changed a lot in 5 years.
2017 Someone could tell me the sky is green I'd awkwardly nod yes and exclaim “of course it is!”. My boss did something similar
I went from being an hourly employee to a contracted one. I made sure it went through my LLC so I could get decent tax breaks. The agreed upon rate was 30% of gross sales. This was a verbal agreement, I have in wrIting 35% of gross sales. With someone not comfortable questioning authority, I said nothing about this.
Each year the percentage would go up. He'd ask me verbally “do you want to make 35%?” ” do you want to make 40%?” It capped at 40. No other contract was ever signed and the location had changed. The written contract included an address to the location I'd be getting a percentage of.
Fast forward to this year I've been calling him out on his verbal abuse. Standing up for myself and it's shown his true colors. He talks down to me constantly, threatens my job, and is just an all around asshole. We get into an argument over hours, because I think that I'm being paid commission, Ive hired good employees to make money, so I'm there 30-40 hours a week for a store that's open 64 hours a week. I have 2 kids, I get to spend time with them with this schedule it works for me.
During the argument I explain this and he says “what? You think your paid a percentage of sales? No you get paid a percentage of your effort” I immediately shut down and he hung up on me after I told him I have nothing to say to him.
I make about 35000 and as someone who has no education, that's good. I cannot continue this abuse anymore and I want to get out but I'm scared and idk how. This guy has been paying me how he feels basically for years and I feel powerless. This is what he wants and he's winning. I'm looking for other jobs and can't find anything decent paying. I planned on going to school I signed up for trade school in January for the summer semester. In the meantime though I'm trying to protect my psychological fortitude without it effecting my children. What can I do?