It's my first time writing something like this, I hope I did it right.
I live in Sweden btw.
I (19M) was contacted recently about a job opportunity, it was a pet hotel ran by a single lady in her house and plot of land. Space build for around 40 cats and 10 dogs, to put it in to perspective.
I had a interview short after and was asked to 'start' tomorrow, Tuesday. Little inexperienced me who's fresh from school forgot to ask some important details and decidedto just forget it. Big mistake.
Me and another dude (19M), let's call him Jim, started immediately that day. We were the only workers there as the other two there quit recently.
The deal was that she will pay us 110kr/h (~11 USD) for 2 weeks, Monday – Friday, 6h/day. After that we will get the normal pay, around 2.000USD/month for newbies. We weren't presented with any contract at that time but we thought it was normal. It was weird she didn't pay us the normal rate from the beginning too but oh well, we paid it no mind.
The three days went by well, we learned and worked independently at times. We DID work even tho we were still learning, this is important.
And on the end of our shift on Thursday, the third day, she showed us a schedule she made.
It showed us working 7 days every week starting next week. Until January 18th.
Immediately after she took us one on one and started talking briefly about the contract.
I don't know how it looks anywhere else, but in Sweden you get paid extra for all red-days and holidays, sometimes just normal Saturdays too.
When I asked about it, she acted surprised and said she never heard such thing! Said it sounds complicated to add to our pay so she won't be doing it.
When Jim asked her the same question he got the same response.
That will mean she wants us to work 7 days/week, which will amount to around 10USD/h! It's basically nothing here, anyone without school and/or language can easily work for 12USD/h.
We both went to a veterinary school and can speak 3 languages perfectly.
She wanted to pay us 10$/h for Christmas eve! 14.00-19.00!
And now the best part!
She doesn't want to pay us for the past 3 days we worked! Because it was the “learning days”, which is pure bullshit and we never heard of this from her before.
We would never agree to work for free if we knew it! I had to pay for a monthly buss card to travel there which was 65$.
We didn't even get to see the contract in the end because she had something to do and left. Promising to bring it on Monday instead. (There was no animals present this Friday so we got to stay home)
After talking to experienced adults me and Jim knew, both of us decided we will leave. We're going to come on Monday but just to ask for money for the days we worked, we'll have to report her if she doesn't but I hope it doesn't go that far.
** I would like to explain that if any of us got bit/attacked/hurt in any way, we would have no compensation from any insurance due to lack of contract.
This was not only a scam but a dangerous situation for the both of us. Many of the dogs had attitude problems and were big, one was even 75kg+, he could hurt us by accident easily.
- Talking about revenge, she has to deal with a full house of animals by herself or lose bunch of money by denying spots due to no staff. 🙂
-Feel free to ask questions because I might missed some things.