This situation is kind of a mess so I'll try and summarise quickly.
First off, I'm in the UK.
- Applied for a job with a small company
-Manager got back to me and immediately asked me to come in for a PAID trial shift. They needed someone urgently. (I have messages from them saying I would be paid for the work)
-When I got there the manager said they didn't like interviews and said doing trials just saves time. Fair enough.
-Completed the work. They said to let them know if I was still interested, went home. Conversed with them over the next day, asked questions. They wanted to train me a little more so offered another trial shift to see how I got on with the training. I said okay.
-2 hours before the training shift they message me saying they can't get there and they'd like me to do it alone. I do it cause the work is easy enough and I kinda needed the money.
-I finish up, tell the manager so and go home.
-Due to them not showing up for training, and a few other bad signs that I can't go into specifics on (red flags of them stringing me along, lowkey lying, being manipulitive, contolling, and unreasonable). I decided to not proceed with the application and told them so asap. They say that's fine and thank you for my time.
-They take my details so they can pay my wages.
-No pay comes through on the 'payday' that was discussed.
-I send them a few messages in the following 3 days asking for updates and also a query about the payslip.
-They finally get back to me saying that its a lot of work to file paperwork to get me paid as what would essentially be an employee, then remove me from their system.
Also said my pay (if they did it the above way) would come about 4 weeks from the date they perviously gave me.
The alternative is to pay me as self employed, but I can't tell if that's good or not. I've tried to research and see if it makes any difference but this situation is so specific it's hard to get an answer.
I was never self employed during this time and lying so they don't have to spend time filing the paperwork isn't something I want to do.
What kind of options do I have here?