So this happend a while ago but I thought I'd share since it seems kinda fitting.
I'm a uni student and do tutoring on the side, mostly maths for people close to their A-levels. Used to be that I did this as a quasi-freelance guy for a local tutoring agency, that also employed my mother (relevant later on). All admin stuff was done by the owner and his father (a very nice dude actually), I just had to write down my hours and I'll get my pay at the end of the month. Some time in the father retired and the bosses new gf took over. Thats when things went downhill quickly.
They wanted to give us equipment (pens and stuff), but wanted us to pay a deposit for those (refused to pay for it, just used my own stuff). They also never cleaned the rooms where the lessonst took place, but asked us to make sure that the tables don't have any markings on there. We were even instructed to rat on the last person who was in there, so they could deduct a “cleaning fee” from their pay.
They also changed the goal date for the payments from 2 weeks to 4 weeks, and told us we would only get payed after the students/parents of the students had payed their bills. This I could have dealt with, although be it reluctantly.
The pay was almost never there after those 4 weeks. I had to ask the owner where my pay was almost every month and got hit with excuses like “the bank is slow” everytime. At some point he told me to take it to his gf since she's was in charge of the agency. When I did that, I recieved a text from him, saying we needed to talk.
He called me later that evening to tell me that my behaviour was inapropriate (it wasn't) and that the due date of the pay was 6 weeks (it wasn't). He then informed me that he wanted to end my working there and he hoped that we could end it on good terms, which I kindly declined.
Remember my mother wo also used to work there? Well she was the big earner for the agency. She was almost soley responsible for it's good name and made up for at least half their profit. When I told here that I had just gotten fired, she was livid. She walked to the agency's rooms the next moring, took all her stuff that she had borrowed them and informed the owner that she would no longer work for them.
The owners fatal mistake (lucky for us) was that they never had us sign any kind of contract. Not even one stating that we weren't allowed to take the students with us when we left. So we did exactly that, and my mother opened up her own small tutoring agency. More then half of the old agency's revenue was gone from one day to another, and their reputation tanked. Word got around that my mother had her own agency, so she got almost all the new students with some going to me. The parent's payed less and I got better pay. The old agency managed to cling on to life for another year or so, until the owner decided to shut it down. He and his gf moved to another city some time ago.
TLDR: Boss fired my after I asked to recieve my pay on time, mom who was the big earner for that place left the day after, half their profit gone.