Before anything else I want to say that my ex-employer will likely read this post. Ever since firing me he has been cyberstalking me and been a huge fucking creep. I know this because when I filed for wage theft after he fired me for the fact he didn't pay me after saying he would pay me out for the month, unpaid vacation time, unpaid medical insurance that I am now $860+ in debt for, and for docking me $550 for an airline ticket they bought WITH REWARD POINTS AND HAD REFUNDED ANYWAYS, I was sent a copy of his reply, which included a huge list of social media posts, emails, and links to long deleted posts he literally had to use a web archive to dredge up. But I will get back to that later on. I just want it to be known my ex-employer will likely see this, and likely respond. And if he does, Hi B.S. Stop fucking stalking me you absolute psycho, if I do something extreme because of the depression I feel, your name will be first on the note I write to go along with it.
I also want it to be known I will be using no names in this post whatsoever. No companies are going to be outed, no bosses named, nothing. I am going to be keeping this 100% anonymous, for my sake mostly. Wouldn't want Mr. B.S. (my ex-boss) to think I am doing a defamation, a thing he did to me by telling the department of labor I threatened a customer, or stole from a roommate, he also accused me of reporting his business to the company whose policy he was violating and I warned him about violating, which is hilarious given that I warned him several times and even provided him with links to the policies he was violating SEVERAL times.
Alright with that out of the way, let's talk about how I gave up everything I had to make someone else's business thrive and even start making money in under a year and they rewarded me by firing me.
So, last year, in 2021 I applied for a job. It was offering a good wage at $20 an hour, and while not the highest wage it happened to be in a field I legitimately wanted to work in. That being, Hobby Gaming. After a very intense few weeks of interviews, calls, emails, and eventually corporate calls I got the job. It felt AMAZING at the time to get the job since it was in a field I had wanted to work for nearly 15 years. At the time I was working a union backed retail job, and looking back maybe I should have stayed the course at that job, but hindsight is 20/20. I put in my 2 weeks, and left. And hey, fun fact about me leaving that job, they paid me out for like 4-6 weeks after I left, and didn't dock me any pay at all, AND even paid out my health insurance for a full 2 months after I left. Mr. B.S. that bit is for you to be aware of, I want you to know how much better the job I DIDN'T like treated me then you.
I used all the pay to rent a Uhaul and moved, the move cost me basically everything I had once I factored in the cost of a brand new apartment and all the deposits required, and having to restock on food, and everything else that goes along with moving to a new place. This cost was not considered at all. Not appreciated one bit, to show how little it mattered my first paycheck was halved, and while it WAS later correct (when I pointed it out to him) the fact that my very first paycheck was HALF what it was meant to be should have been a massive red flag at the time. My first “real” work day was just a few days after arriving, I say “real” because the weeks leading up to the actual first day I had to spend at least 1 day working setting up emails, socials, and sitting in on corporate phone calls. NONE of which were paid, I literally spent 1-2 days a week working without pay prior to arriving. Again, another massive red flag that I missed at the time. Those corporate calls would go for a full 10 months after my employment, completely unpaid. Something I wish I had thought to mention to the Department of labor when I filed.
So the first couple weeks were a lot of waiting around and discussing plans, we were waiting on paperwork and permits to go through, during this time we went over a lot of policies, and discussed distributors, inventory, etc. Finally once all the paperwork and permits were in place we able to start actually doing ordering… Except the computers and PoS weren't set up yet, so I had to start ordering inventory… On my phone, my personal cell. Granted this only lasted a few days, but it speaks volumes to the ineptitude of the business owner that he didn't provide proper equipment for the tasks he required of me. When the computers did arrive and we were able to work properly things took another turn. See, we had a list of… “suggested” items for inventory from a corporate office, whose final value was something in the area of $300-$400,000, I did my best to put in orders but after a couple weeks of ordering he told me to stop, and I was over budget. A budget he had not even told me existed, when I pointed out I was only following the instructions from the corporate office he said he would talk to corporate and work something out, as he claims he couldn't afford that much inventory. I will skip the boring stuff that occurred, but two things happened after that. First, he failed to discuss the issue with the corporate office, which became a problem because to open he required a MINIMUM inventory of $180,000 retail. Which lead to issue the second, me having to bust my ass overnight to get in enough orders to fill inventory requirements, right before the holiday season when warehouses were at their lowest.
We failed to make the minimum by $20,000, but the corporate office was willing to let it go, but this results in a ton of backorders that resulted in a future problem, let's call it the Gold problem for now and I will return to it soon.
The next few weeks were spent receiving orders, working on getting the PoS set up, pricing, organizing, whole lotta us working to get everything in and ready to go on time for the opening, which he had set for the Black Friday weekend. My time was also divided doing interviews for staff, after hours, unpaid. Of course. But at the time I wasn't thinking about all the off the clock work I was doing, I was thinking about how much I wanted to work there, a mistake I will NEVER make again. Believe me. I hired a small group of people, if I recall counting myself and my boss we had 7 people in total.
Within a week of opening my boss told me I had to fire someone, but not in the “I am sorry we have to let you go for X reasons” way, the “Take them off the schedule and do not tell them why” way. Within I think a month I was told I had to fire a second person. Within a couple months a third person just quit, didn't bother to tell me, they just stopped showing up for work. I found out later they hated working their and were under an insane amount of pressure from MY boss to plan an event for a game they knew nothing about, and learn the rules to another game they didn't want to learn. In other words, my boss was pressuring my staff, instead of having me work with them to get stuff organized. I could also mention at this point that all three staff we lost were women of colour, Now I want to be 100% clear, I do not think that was the reason they were let go/pressured into quitting. BUT, it is a very specific detail, especially given that even after I was fired no PoC had been hired except one, who was let go shortly after finding my replacement. Again, might be nothing, maybe it was a huge coincidence.
Regardless, going back to opening the store, before opening I was pressured into hiring a personal friend of the owner to work part time, this was a red flag that DID go off at the time, but I didn't want to jeopardize my job. However it sorta caused a bit of an issue during the opening of the store. During the grand opening we did a series of giveaways, and while I and other staff decided not to enter, on account of it being the proper way to do it, this personal friend DID enter, and just happened to win the grand prize, a collectable TCG box valued, at the time, at over $900. The box HAPPENED to also be donated to the drawing by the owner. The owner whose personal friend had just won it. And while no one talked to the owner, including me, I did get a LOT of complaints after the fact about it and how bullsh*t it was that his personal friend, and an employee of the store, happened to win the box. It set a very bad precedent that would carry over into future events, and staff after that point would enter every single event drawing, and would always cause issues when they won. I however had no power to stop it, since all the staff would go over my head to MY boss, who would promptly undercut my authority, it lead to a very serious insubordinate employee making a huge public scene at an event, an event Mr. B.S. listed as a reason for firing me, along side his other reasons.
So let's talk about what got me fired. First it is important to know that we would outsource event organizing as much as possible, handing off the reigns to an event to a person we got to know and trusted to handle it, and we would pay them 20% of the event entry in store credit for their efforts. It was a good system, it meant not having to pay employees (even though we were already there, so actually not a plus?), and it meant not having to dedicate extra resources to running an event. MOST events went off without a single hitch, until one didn't. Many game companies have specific corporate policies, or rules in place to ensure events are run correctly. We had someone who was an uncertified judge (who I hope is NOT a judge anymore, certified or not) who decided to put his own house rules into an event. Doing so is a CLEAR violation of a policy for that game, and can literally get the store barred form selling that companies product, and even get us blacklisted from some distributors. It was a VERY serious situation. So I tried to talk to the person, lets call them Mr. F. I spent an hour and a half trying to talk Mr. F out of doing his house rules, I tried using basic logic, explaining that his house rules would lead to future confusion for players when those rules weren't employed in proper events. I tried showing how his rules didn't make sense by giving him clear and simple examples of way to get around them without breaking them. I even tried to just tell him he couldn't do it because it could cause the store to be banned form running events. Finally I had to demand he prove his certification as a judge, and the information of the one who certified them, a thing they, as a judge, are required to provide if asked. Mr. F took that as a threat and took a portion of the conversation out of context and sent it to my boss, my boss then took me aside and fired me a couple days later for threatening a customer, despite it NOT being a threat. I will also remind everyone that we PAID them to be there, meaning that while not officially an employee they shouldn't be considered a customer either.
Later he would list the confrontation between myself and the employee as a reason for firing me, despite the camera footage showing THAT employee being told to stop making a scene and making an even bigger scene and claiming I had no right to tell them what to do off the clock, and that I was doing my bes tot deescalate before telling them outright, “As your boss I am telling you that you need to drop it.” Worth noting, and not actually important, but the employee was also cheating in the event, just an important note. I noticed that that particualr employee had a “win at all costs” attitude when playing games, including finding rules just vague enough to be interpreted in such a way that it swings in their favor. Again, not really important to this, but I felt it worth saying.
So now let's talk about what I did. First I had to move back home, it sucks. I do not like the town I am in, it's a slowly dying place, population here peaked at 8,000 and has been on a steady decline for the last 35 years. After that I spent the first week back here fighting suicidal depression, a depression I am not over yet, i am no longer suicidal for the most part, but sometimes it's a real struggle to even get out of bed, some days I go 12-13 hours before eating because I feel like a complete waste of life and don't deserve to eat. After that first week I basically just got a minimum wage job to keep myself fed, living with family, living day to day. Then I got my final paycheck, and it was missing $550. I emailed Mr. B.S. about it and asked why it was missing, and he gave the most corporate robot answer imaginable, but the long and short of it was he (the company) had paid for a plane ticket for me to go to a special week(?) long training session at the corporate offices. Obviously I was fired, so there was no reason for that ticket to exist anymore. However, he had bought the ticket using a personal credit card, and using reward points, a thing with NO MONETARY VALUE. As such, he could not get it refunded, and so he decided to pull a number out of his ass based on the amount he spent per point and how much the ticket costed without points and came up with $550, an amount he would then dock from MY final check. I told him he had no legal right to do so, and again responded in the most corporate robot way possible told me I was lucky to even be getting my final check at all as I had no legal right to it, as I was not actually working and it was ONLY a verbal agreement that he would pay me out anyways…
So I scraped up all the paperwork I had, which was not much considering that I was NOT allowed back into the building despite being told I wouldn't be banned and was welcome to shop and attend events, so I was not able to retrieve my contract(s) or employment information. I mathed out the vacation time he owed me for, the unpaid insurance that he (the company) agreed to pay when I was hired (we will be back to THAT in a moment), and the emails about the plane ticket and I shipped it all off to the department of labor. After a few weeks, or about 2 weeks ago today, I received a denial letter. In short, they can't force him to pay for things he promised, only hours worked that I went unpaid for. So the roughly $2200-$3000 he actually owed me was denied.
So now let's do a quick insurance talk. When I was employed I was to receive health insurance. He agreed to pay for it, it was part of the interview, even the corporate offices backed it. He just… DIDN'T pay it out. Instead he claims to have spoken to “someone” he claims was a lawyer who told him to just have me buy my own insurance through the state, and pay me the difference. In other words, I applied for state subsidized insurance, paid what they said I owed, and he would refund me. However he told me to pick the CHEAPEST plan I could find, and said before I was to pay any to run it by him, the final plan he picked for me, after making ME apply for it, was a plan that cost $1.76 a month, with tax credit. In other words, money I would owe later during tax time. In addition there was to be a 401k set up when I started working, and that never happened either. I could do the math on that, but I am too tired to be bothered, based on what my pay WAS it was likely around another $4000-$5000+.
During the wage theft claim he claims he raised my pay, and moved me to salaried, and THAT was meant to cover my health insurance, which isn't true. He did it because he saw I was working like 60 hour work weeks and 12 hour days and didn't want to pay me overtime. I can't prove it, but that was the reason.
And of course… There's the cyberstalking, which I found out sort of before this all happened, when a post I made on reddit was brought up in a meeting about the other employee incident (not related to that incident, or the Mr. F incident), claiming that I was not allowed to talk about customers online, even though the thread was 100% anonymous, no names mentioned, but I was told if someone found it or the person I was talking about, who again was NEVER named, saw it they could use it to negatively impact the store with a bad review. That's right, my social media posting was taken away because my boss was scared of a bad review. During the filing process he was allowed to respond to my claims, and in them he had… DOZENS of links, some to recent posts, some to long deleted posts he had to use web archives to find, personal and private emails and chat logs all shared. How did he get them? Why did he have them at all? Why was he bringing them up to the labor department? No idea, even the caseworker thought it was fucking insane for him to do it. Honestly, I feel like I should be reporting him to the police for it, but I also feel like it's more hassle then I want to deal with right now. Finally he went to my roommate, who also worked at the same store, and asked him to lie to the labor department on his behalf. I know this, because Mr. B.S. gave them the chat logs between himself and my roommate, like a moron. In them the roommate is clearly uncomfortable, Mr. B.S. asking if I had stolen from him, to which my roommate replied “I wouldn't put it like that” because… He knows it's a lie. Mr. B.S. runs with it regardless, claiming I stole my roommates furniture, his dishes, cookware, and several appliances. However… Furniture we split the cost of, and all I took was ONE coffee table, since it was all that would fit into my Uhaul, everything else I took, the shelves, display cases, tables, dishes, appliances, the rug, the cleaning supplies, broom, even the god damn shower curtain (which I didn't take, I left the curtain) were all mine BEFORE he moved in with me. I owned 95% of everything in the apartment. Another note was made about the couch being “soiled” which… half true, it's true one of my cats DId pee on it, it's also true that I spent 30 minutes scrubbing it to get it clean. I also DIDN'T want the couch, and the roommate bought it and demanded I pay for half, which I did. I think in total I spend around $600 splitting furniture costs ($250 of which was the couch alone) and I took… A single coffee table. but that was enough for my boss to declare I had stolen from my roommate, one of his employees, and asked the department of labor to press charges. I am dead serious, there is a whole paragraph in his response asking the labor department of the united states of America to press charges for theft, it is INSANE.
So here I am now, months after being fired, a couple weeks after being denied my wage theft claim, a looming $900 debt come tax time, working a minimum wage job, trying to figure out my next move while my ex-employee fucking cyber stalks me like a psychopath. Ultimately this boils down to my word vs his, due to not being able to get my paperwork I cannot prove there was a contract, I can't prove he didn't pay for the corporate call times, I can prove he is cyberstalking me but that isn't worth much sadly.
Anyways, vent/rant over, hopefully my ex-employer doesn't respond to this, he has told me not to contact him anymore, maybe his bosses will see if and ask him wtf he is doing, who knows. Just needed to get this off my chest and hope it will bring some tiny comfort that others know, even if they don't have names of businesses or individuals, about this shitty behavior.