I'll try to write this out as effeciently as possible.
I've been at my job for 9 months and I've never really thought of this as a big deal until now, and ironically it was actually my manager's boss who got me thinking more about this.
Only 2 people work at my store – myself and my manager. I'm hourly and my manager is salary. The good thing is my off-the-clock work is making cash deposits at the bank so there's a paper trail both in my store and at the bank that shows I've been doing this my entire time with the company.
As of now, I close the store. If the register exceeds $300 at the end of the day, I have to deposit the difference into the bank. I'm on the clock when I fill out the deposit slip and bag, but by the time I actually drop the deposit off at the bank, I've long been out of the building and off the clock. This didn't seem weird to me because I know of at least 3 other stores where hourly employees are the closers, so I’m guessing they’re making the deposit drops.
So my issues are: 1) when I drop these deposits off, I'm doing so on behalf of my employer and I'm doing the duties/job requirements of my employment – but I'm off the clock. 2) I know if there are injuries, etc. when someone is working off the clock, they're SOL and not covered. This has me very nervous because I'm taking CASH from the register that I'm solely responsible for delivering to the bank. What if something were to happen to the money? If I was in an accident, robbed, etc., and I lost my company's money when I'm technically not on the clock, then what?
The logical fix is pretty obvious – make me the opener and my salaried manager the closer. But I feel like I will definitely get some push back (especially from my manager). So I wanted to come here just to make sure that this is technically considered working off the clock before I go to whoever is in charge and tell them I'm not comfortable doing job duties off the clock anymore, and I'm not comfortable taking cash from the register and being responsible for delivering that to the bank when I am not covered because I'm not actively working on behalf of my company when I leave the building with their cash in my possession.
TLDR
If I say I no longer want to work off the clock by making bank deposits long after I’ve clocked out, and I don't want to be responsible for company cash when I'm off the clock, is that something they can legally continue to make me do? If not and they refuse to fix the situation and I don't accept that, can they fire me without any legal repercussion?