I wanted to share my story with you all in hopes someone can read this and not make the same mistake for themselves.
Don't ever offer to delay your own pay out of kindness to your employer.
Sounds like a no brainer, right? Well, sometimes a circumstance might make you want to offer a favor. Which I did and it backfired on me badly.
During covid I switched from an office job to working for a carpenter to get my foot into the trades. This carpenter was a sole proproieter. I was hired on as his one and only employee.
While working, my boss was having his house built. Him and I did A LOT of work on the house because he could write a lot off and have a helper (me) at 17 dollars per hour instead of paying market hourly rate for labor. (Min wage is $15 where I live)
Some days were extremely long and his stubbornness to not rent equipment meant we did a lot of work in bad conditions.
Moving steel house beams by hand with ratchet straps. Carrying entire floor joists by hand and uphill etc, even on days with heat advisories with no shade until we built enough of the house to make our own shade. Not worth $17 per hour.
Certain steps of the house build had to be complete before the bank would release his next sum of money. That includes passing inspections. Sometimes he would claim to have ran out of money just a couple weeks before the next pay out.
Feeling bad for him being so close and getting screwed over. I offered verbally to have my pay delayed a week or two until he gets his next lump sum.
I was putting quite a bit into savings so I would be fine to wait for my pay. He said no, but I guess he later decided that paying me was no longer a priority.
I ended up going a month without pay. When I finally did get paid, it was only for some of the hours and not all. I would have to ask my boss how many hours I was paid for and trust he was honest not to rip me off.
All my pay cheques were interact E-Transfer. I never got a pay stubs or memo telling me how many hours each pay was for. And since he WAS deducting tax properly, I couldn't just divide my pay by 17 because I wasn't sure how to calculate income tax exactly.
So now I have a convoluted mess of tracking my hours, deducting hours from older pay periods to try and figure out how many hours are still owed to me.
To make things worse, my boss is my brother's friend and they do business together with their own companies. So I didn't want to refuse work and make things awkward between them.
One day there was an argument with the dry wallers and my boss about money. So I found out he wasn't paying other people either. In fact, those dry wallers came to his property one weekend and stole his generator in attempt to get some of their owed money back.
By the end of my employment with him, I was owed 293 unpaid hours at $17 per hour. Roughly $5000. Money that I was supposed to use for savings was being used for rent, groceries, gas for several months.
I ended up switching to a new skilled trade that pays more, I'm treated very well, and am unionized since March.
Between March and now, I was getting annoyed because repeated reminders about my money was pushed off and delayed. My brother was doing work at his house and his invoices were paid promptly. This made me really mad because I was $17 per hour and my brother's company is probably anywhere from $150 to $250 per hour at his company invoice rate.
Since it hit the 6 month mark (my oldest unpaid pay cheque was from December 2021) I was getting ready to consider legal action even though my only proof was texts due to no pay stubs.
However, the story finally came to a conclusion this weekend where I asked again and he finally provided me a money order with all 293 hours of pay. I can finally replenish my savings that took a hit over my time of work there.
Alllllll this because I saw he was in a bad situation and I just wanted to be nice and offer my pay to be late 1 to 2 weeks to help him out. I had no idea I would be taken advantage of and lose out on hundreds of hours over a several month fiasco.
If I were to give any advice or do it all over again. I would do this:
If no pay comes in. Ask right away when it will come in. If I'm not paid by the next pay period, I won't work until my outstanding hours are in my hand or bank account. I will never, ever, ever offer to delay my pay again.