My wife is an assistant bar manager (so a bartender) at a pizza place. She's been there since they opened (6 mo) and she makes $18/hr plus tips. Recently she got sick and asked around for someone to cover her shift. She said she'd still come in if they couldn't find somebody but the store manager said he'd do it. Fine. So she was out the next day too, and he covered her that day too. Later that day, the bar manager took her entirely off the schedule.
She contacted the store and bar managers, neither of whom would even respond to her. So she hit up the owner, who said “well that's not policy” or whatever, and shortly after that she received a message from her bar manager who said “I gave you 2 weeks off to feel better.” Then later that week the bar manager said she'd need to give her a doctor's excuse. Well my wife didn't go to the doctor because we don't have insurance and it was just a cold, so she had to go to some online physician to get a post-dated excuse. She sent in the excuse and the bar manager said “okay, i'll put you back on as a server,” with server pay, which is $2.13/hr.
Today my wife got what i can only assume is her final paycheck, and all the hours she'd worked as a bartender had been bumped down to server pay. So the one day on that pay period that she'd worked, which was 12 hours because she was covering someone else's shift, ended up being bumped down from $18/hr plus tips to 2.13/hr plus tips. She's already done the smart thing and filed for unemployment, and so far nobody at the company that she's reached out to has responded in about a week. She's so hurt and i'm so hurt for her; her birthday is tomorrow and i know she's going to be thinking about this shit all day. Just getting this all off my chest, thanks for listening.