Hi all, I'm sorry if I sound really stupid here but this is my first real job and I wanted some advice. Without going into detail, I work at an escape room as both a moderator of rooms and a scare actor for our scary rooms.
First things first, I genuinely enjoy working there. I get along wonderfully with all my coworkers, I'm queer and live in a VERY anti-queer area so finding somewhere thats willing to call me by my preferred name, pronouns, and where I'm surrounded by other queer people like me has done wonders for my self acceptance issues. I love running rooms, sometimes it gets exhausting but you wouldn't believe all the goofy shit people do in escape rooms, I love scaring people as weird as it sounds, its highly amusing and over the months I've worked there and been running rooms, I can only recall once or twice I was genuinely exhausted doing it.
Now onto the bad stuff. Due to the nature of a business run on bookings, works not guaranteed, I don't have a set schedule which honestly isn't the worst thing for me. I don't mind being on call most of the time, sometimes its really annoying because I want to go do things but theres a chance I could get called in and be unable to get in my uniform and to my job in time. I do have staffed shifts, though they are rarer, I usually get one about every other week but there are times where I really just want more hours and the whole on call bullshit is really obnoxious.
The owners very shady, a family member works at the sister company owned by the same guy and when we talked about it we realized the dudes shady as fuck. He keeps his staff under 50, which in our state means he can avoid stuff like paying for our on call hours since legally he's a small business or whatever. He uses loopholes to underpay and avoid labor laws. He makes us clock out when we're not doing anything (like if we're waiting for a room and are unable to do closing chores) which for me has taken a good few 100 from my paychecks. Idk if its a common thing so correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm spending my time there and going out of my way to show up and be a team player, do I not deserve pay? cause theres a million different things I'd rather do then sit in an office and wait for work.
Tonight and something a few weeks ago was kinda the breaking point for me that made me realize they might be taking advantage of me. A few weeks ago I worked 14 hours, from around 9 in the morning to 1:40 am. They did not tell me I would be working that much, I was told I'd be leaving at midnight at the latest, but it was almost 2 am. My ride was pissed at me but I'm not allowed to even text when running rooms, which is what I was doing, we got a late night booking of drunk people and I had to do some closing chores afterwards. It seems insignificant but I rely on a ride and they were waiting in the parking lot for close to two hours waiting bc I couldn't get a straight answer on when I could leave and kept getting assigned tasks.
For context, if you're staffed, you have to stay till closing, if you're on call you can leave when you're done running rooms. This will be important in a moment, today I was staffed from 4-11. I told my managers “Hey, I NEED to leave by 11:30 at the latest, and if you're keeping me later you have to let me know” I tried my best to be firm and really try and make them understand that I relied on my ride and if things changed I'd need them to let me know. We didn't have a ton of staff today, just me, two shift leads, and two managers, and two other coworkers, one of which was staffed and the other on call.
Everyone else was running rooms, so I was told to go get closing started, I figured most of my coworkers are almost done and they can come help after they shut the rooms down. I don't mind chores tbh, I put my headphones in and kinda just go into my own world, its peaceful sometimes. Our closing tasks are usually a 4 person job as the buildings huge and has a lot to do. I ended up cleaning both bathrooms entirely and wiping down couches and chairs before the on call coworker showed up. they said they were told to do one or two things before leaving, so they adjusted the chairs in our event room, cleaned the door knobs, picked up some trash and left. This is maybe 2% of closing. And the rest of my coworkers did finish running their rooms, but no one came to help me. I ended up walking upstairs because I had been cleaning for two solid hours and I was really hungry, I figured I could eat some fruit snacks and hopefully by then someone could help me. and when I walked in both managers and shift leads were sitting in the office doing nothing eating mcdonalds. I figured they'd finish eating and at least the shift leads would come help me, and to be fair one of them did and did all the makeup stuff.
But I was very, very wrong. I ended up pretty much doing everything myself, which resulted in me cleaning for 3 hours and doing a 4 person job because I was staffed and closing HAD to be done before I could leave. My on call coworker just got to leave, I also want to mention I've been on call before and they've told me I had to finish closing before I could leave. I was just getting started on closing when they left. When i finally did everything, I went upstairs and asked if I could leave, it was late and I was beyond exhausted after doing the work of 4 people. But the manager said no, and there was still deep clean to do, we do deep clean in the mornings and evenings but sometimes don't get through all of it as we obviously can't be wiping down the lobby and vacuuming while the guests are in the lobby, on busy days the lobbys just too full to do all of deep clean in a timely manner. I did most of deep clean too, i had help with it, but I did probably 70% of our deep clean. I was exhausted and ended up vacuuming the rest of the building while the manager scrubbed a mark off a wall and the shift lead cleaned some makeup brushes, then both shift leads and the other manager got to leave before me.
It was close to midnight by the time I left, even if I was firm and basically begged them to lmk if anything changed, and no the other staffed coworker never showed up to help. Idk where they were to be honest, I saw them right before I went to vacuum and then didn't see them again till I left.
Am I really being taken advantage of here? I feel taken advantage off and my dad says that was unethical to let me clean the whole thing when there were people who could've helped, but I'm still inexperienced with all this.