I work doing Time and Attendance for a large grocery chain. I have to go through associates timecards each week and submit them to corporate so they could get paid.
When I first started doing this work, I discovered a few of my associates with down syndrome not getting paid, like at all, for paid vacation that they took. When I looked further into the issue, I saw that one of them wasn’t even getting paid correctly for holiday work.
I was so angry, I turned in my two weeks notice. Management essentially begged me to stay—not because I am super awesome or anything, but because none of the other 200 people at my store wanted to do the job. It is mostly thankless work, tedious, and it is impossible to walk into the store without getting mobbed by people needing some issue taken care of.
I agreed to stay on with the condition that I not have set hours and I work when I want to work—as long as the job gets done, I was told there would be no issue from management. One manager even told me, “I’ll deal with you not working your ‘scheduled’ hours, but we do have to at least put you on the schedule.”
There was no issue with any of this, and for weeks I was able to come in, when I wanted, and get the job done. Then I noticed that the corporation wasn’t paying people correctly. I informed my district HR and I was told that the problem would get fixed. Months later, it was not fixed and associates (including myself), were missing hundreds of dollars owed to us. This was, and is, wage theft. The employer knew they weren’t paying employees for work done, in some cases at all, in other cases, incorrectly.
I started telling associates how and when they were missing money. I also started telling them how to go about getting their missing money. When that wasn’t working and corporate was still paying people incorrectly or not at all, I told people to contact the department of labor.
The next thing I know, I am getting suspended, ostensibly for not working my scheduled hours (although that hadn’t been an issue for weeks and weeks prior). Now I am going without pay and bills aren’t getting paid and I’m about 25k in medical debt (I have MS and my medicine costs 10k a month).
Even though I have an Associates and Bachelors degree, been featured on a billboard for a prior company due to my accomplishments, and have received many accolades for my work everywhere I have ever worked—I can’t seem to find another job. The thing is, I actually want to work, just not for the $12 an hour with no benefits that is the only offer I’ve received in my job search efforts.
Now I am seriously considering just giving up on it all and letting myself just die. No point in keeping up with the expensive medications that make me able to stand and walk if I can’t get a job. No point in eating anymore if I have nowhere productive to go to spend that energy. I’m down in a pit of despair and depression. I wonder if people realize that maybe the suicide rates in the US are tied to how so many of us are treated by employers.