So I worked for this small screen printing/signage/graphic design business in Illinois for almost a year. The worst work experience I've ever had.
I was the concierge, so I'd deal with all the customers. My boss was the only one in control of the finances and this dude was BROKE, he absolutely couldn't afford to run his business nor take the orders he was making money for. Basically, his genius practice was to collect money from order A, spend it on order B, and then collect money for order C, and spend it on order A. This sounds complicated, right? Wouldn't you think to use person A's money on person A's order? Nope. He HAD to scrape by. Anyways, back to dealing with customers. This practice would lead to people REASONABLY being pissed because we'd be a month out from when they placed their orders and garments hadn't even been ordered yet since my boss inevitably ran out of money spending it all on other things. This would all fall back on me since he refused to be transparent with clients about where their money was going, so he straight-up gave me a protocol to tell them they were pretty far back in the production schedule. This was obviously a lie since there were many days that the production team (who was great by the way) didn't have any work to do since nothing had been ordered. I got yelled at constantly by customers for things out of my control since my boss refused to take accountability and manage the company himself.
The money issues didn't stop there. The business is notorious for not paying its employees. My boss would often times write checks for everyone and HOPE he'd make the money to clear their checks the following week. We all had checks that bounced, and I had a check that was over 6 weeks delinquent before he was even able to pay me back for it. I threatened to leave my job if he wasn't able to pay me back, and he tried to guilt trip me about his own shitty financial problems to make me feel bad. So in conclusion, I left my job and still haven't received my final paycheck from almost a month ago. If anybody has any resources to report terrible business practices, please send them my way. I've already filed a wage claim, but obviously, that will take forever since it's in the hands of the government now.