This happened a few years ago, and I'm posting from a throwaway account, so I feel safe talking about it now. I once worked for a franchised spa.
I started at one of the franchise owner's locations for $9.50/hr + commission. I eventually started working at the call center he owned that took calls for a few different locations. The pay for the call center was $10/hr since there's no opportunity for commission. But since I was splitting my time between the call center and the spa for 3 months, I stayed at 9.50/hr.
The call center started taking up more and more of my schedule, meaning I wasn't making the extra pay and also wasn't making commission. When I brought this up to the owner, he told me there's no way to have two different paycodes in ADP. One of my coworkers knew someone who had that set up in ADP so that was a blatant lie. Finally I just switched to the call center full time, at 10.50/hr since I'd been around for a while, had a great track record, and call center paid $1 /hr more.
It comes time for my annual raise, and for the 90 day raise for one of my coworkers. Both get denied, and he tells us that switching to the call center “counted” as our scheduled raise. That same week, one of his locations (40 minute drive away) has a massive Covid outbreak and he asks us to cover shifts out there on the same week we roll out a new computer booking system. My coworker and I saved his ass in a major way by covering them during a rough transition
Later my direct supervisor advocated for my coworker to get her 90 day raise since she was at $10 an hour and making the same money as someone walking in the door. Owner realizes he made a mistake because he thought the starting rate for call center was 9.50/hr. So he basically denied my coworker a raise since he had no idea what the starting pay was, and later tried to blame it on the previous supervisor.
Since he approved my coworker's 25¢ raise, and he knew we were close, he agreed to my annual raise. He gives me a 15¢ per hour pay raise. I was a really hardworking employee, knew all of the policies back and forth, trained other coworkers for no extra pay, hardly ever made errors with booking, and smoothed things over with a lot of pissed off customers. I save him a ton of money and cover for him during Covid scares, and he offers me an extra $6/week. I was so insulted I started looking for other jobs right away
The owner was a jackass of the highest order, condescending, micromanaging. He was so dumb that he thought unplugging a call center phone and bringing it somewhere else would leave the phone lines to his other locations in tact. He wouldn't listen when someone tried to tell him that's not how phones work. He had lockboxes on the thermostats, and a microphone in the call center so he could listen in on conversations.
So I left, and went to work at another spa where another one of his former employees was at. And I ended up talking my coworker and supervisor into quitting as well. Fuck that guy.
TL;DR – Owner denied myself and coworker raises because he didn't know what our pay was supposed to be, then asks us to cover his ass. Once he realized his mistake, blamed the old supervisor for setting the starting pay and gave us both an insultingly low raise. So I left