This happened many years ago, but still a bit peeved about it.
I was working for a big name security company in Central California. The comp had a reputation of “forgetting” to pay hours worked. I kept detailed logs of my hours and a copy of every time sheet and shift report written to prove the hours worked. After about a year of “errors” I was owed several hundred dollars in back pay. I spoke with the ops manager regularly on this and I was never paid.
At one point, before this issue became obnoxious, I was asked by the operations manager to see if I could fix the site vehicle which had been having problems. The manager knew I had some experiance with cars and didn't want to take the time to send it to a shop. I agreed to do it on my free time and he agreed to pay me X dollars for the work. I never got paid for this.
After a year of this I finally quite. My final paycheck wasn't issued until about three months after I left. I called the Employment department about the owed wadges. I spoke with a worker who told me to document every detail, which I had already done, fill out a form and send everything in to their office. He reviewed my complaint and stated that I would recieve the back pay plus panalties.
I sent in the paperwork and a short time after was set with an interview. This was to be an arbitration between me, the ops manager and one of the Empoyment Dept workers. The agency decided to set the apointment in the city the employer was located. I lived about 100 miles north of the main office and did not have transportation. I explained this to the worker who said it was policy and I would just have to find a way to get there.
I took the Greyhoud and rode overnight to get to the appointment on time. During the interview I laid out everything I had. The worker asked the ops manager if he had anything to say or go againt my claims. Mind you everything I sent to them was copied to the ops manager so he could prepare for a responce and argue the companies case. He responded with “I didn't have time to put anything together.” The worker decided to reschedule the meeting for another day. I complained that I had shown up ready, that the ops had planty of time and access to all the information, and that it was a two day bus ride to this meeting and back. The worker got pissed and yelled at me saying this was how it was done and I would have to just work with it. I took the bus back home pissed off.
I got a letter about a week later from the worker saying all my papers had been lost and I would have to resubmit everything via mail. I made another copy of everything and sent it via registered mail, signature required on recipt. I recieved back the recipt showing the package was recieved by the front desk at the employment office. A while later I recieved another letter saying that the papers had not arrived. I called and told the worker that I had sent the papers and that it had been signed for. He asked if I sent the originals. I told him no. I could tell he was upset at this and said I had to send them again. I did the same thing as before and again got a letter saying the items had not been recieved. I called again and the worker said that they had no record of the items being recived at their office. I told him I had a reciept showing they were signed for by the front desk and that I had the name of the worker who signed. The guy said it was too late, the deadline had already passed and someone must have lost the papers. He told me there was nothing else I could do, the case was closed and hung up.
I called several times after this and no one would speak to me on the matter. I finally gave up dropped the whole thing.