Around the beginning of September, I went to Austin from Houston to work there and the deal was me and my crew of 3 people (including myself) were gunna get paid like 20 an hour including overtime including a place to stay while we work.
So we all agreed. Upon arriving to the house we were all staying we discovered that there was only 5 beds out of the total of 7 people.
I said fuck it and crashed on the couch. I regretted it because my back started to hurt and didn’t sleep well. Then we started work.
Immediately the boss turned into someone else at the the job. I was prepping a room and was cleaning it he said “HEY WTF SRE YOU DOING!?”
I said “I’m prepping the room. We just finished demolition.”
He said “who told you to do this?”
I said this is the process. Demo, clean, install, etc etc etc.
He said “I never told you to fucking do that. I want you installing cabinets.
I said “yes sir I’ll get to it now if that’s what u want”
He started to do this all the fucking time.
Belittling me saying “my young daughter who’s only 15 Can install tile flooring better than you. And I taught her!”
I said “oh really well that’s cool…wow”
I didn’t give a shit. The guy can talk and talk and talk.
I just push through his bullshit while he’s standing over me technically saying I’m incompetent and am too young (I’m 27 been doing this for 5 years. It’s not fucking hard installing 2×1 rectangle tiles in about 5×5 feet of floor) anyways with all this shit talking I thought this guys pays the way he Carry’s himself.
But no.
After 3 weeks he paid. He was supposed to pay on the 2nd week. So he’s late he gave me my check and it was short.
I worked 130 hours for the first 2 weeks.
He paid me for no overtime and not even the wage he said. It was about 1000 dollars short.
I told this about him and he said “oh I’ll give you te rest soon don’t worry”
I waited Untill the next week to get the next check.
Same fucking pay.
I said “if you don’t pay me the diffrence that you owe ima going to leave the job”
He said “yeah yeah don’t worry man ima pay you just don’t talk about your wage to other people, cuz if you do you are fucking with my business.” He said this infront of my small crew.
So after thinking I left.
Went back home. I felt used, abused, and my body defenitely was hurting. Not gunna lie guys. I was very upset when I got home after a month and had nothing to show for it.
All in all the guy was a liar, narcissist, and a fucking asshole that didn’t wanna pay what he owed.
I felt more defeated as I remembered him saying he can’t pay anyone overtime becusse we are 1099’s.
I remember telling him we made a deal. It was a deal and becuase I didn’t get a contract to confirm this deal I got fucked in the end.
My father tells me to call the labor force but I feel like the system would fail me becuase I don’t have a written document to prove this. Just 2 checks arnt right. My other two crew mates stayed but I left. After this I want to give up on contracting work people have made me hate my own passion