Okay, I left this business about 6 months ago but I still have so many emotions about it that I just wanted to tell the world. I’ll try to keep it as short as I can.
I worked at a restaurant and at first it was… fine. There was some red flag my boss, he’s kinda sexist. I learnt this when I started and I was working with the only other girl. He came in and I quote “so glad to have two girls on, this store is going to be so clean.” I looked at my coworker with a “is he serious?” Look, She basically told that he says dumb things like that all the time.
I also ask the staff how reliable was the pay was as this was only a small business. One of my coworkers mentioned that the boss had owed an ex employee a lot of money and never paid him. I was desperate for a job so I stayed.
He owed money to a lot of people, the business was struggling and he was dodging payments. Soon he was dodging my pay, just me, there were two other boys and their pay was fine for a couple of months but he was late and short on my pay. He paid me in cash and gave me a makeshift payslips. Pretty sure he wasn’t putting any money away for tax or my super.
As I said the business was struggling we rarely had stock. I was on in the mornings as he “only trusted me with setting up the store,” I would send him a giant list of things we needed and he would go to Coles and buy them. I cant remember the last time we had stock delivered I was always worried about asking him to buy things for the store on pay day as I thought it would affect my pay. It’s very embarrassing not being able to give customers change or have to N/A most of the menu. When I started my current job, for the first several weeks I would get emotional opening the till and see that there was money.
I hated getting paid. It felt like I was robbing him. Every payday he would come in and take the cash from his wallet. When it was short which was most if not all the time. He would empty his pockets and talk about how he’s living off change in his car.
He would get his staff to block people who were trying to get in contact with him as he owed them money. He has ran out the back of the store, cut the business phone line, always tell us to never give anyone his contact information. It was a whole big thing.
The store was disgusting. He seemed to have the health inspector wrapped around his finger. There were bugs everywhere. The longer I was there the more they migrated closer to the front of the store. They lived in the microwave. Every time I would tell him, he had to do something about the bugs, he would go around and spray fly spray everywhere. Surprisingly, that never fixed it. That place needs a tent or just to be set on fire. I’ve thrown up on two seperate occasions just because the place was so disgusting.
I started to look for a new job a few weeks into not getting paid properly. I gave him some time to get his shit together. I found a job and gave him my one weeks notice, I was going to give him two but my new boss said I only had to give him one (so glad he said that.) Fair Work said I only have to give my boss notice if it’s in my contact. I don’t think it was but I wanted to be considerate since he was struggling
He was not happy as he was already very short on staff. He wanted to beat the hours my new job was giving me, I was like “you can’t even pay me for the hours I’m working now!” I didn’t say that, I thought that, but I just told him how much I would be making at my new job and he instantly stopped.
So my boss only comes in the mornings to drop off the groceries. When I gave my notice he put me on night shifts through the week. I never work night shifts. I fully believe he did this to avoid paying me for my last week.
On my second to last day. I had a man come in saying that my boss owed him money and that he’s been trying to get in contact with him but hasn’t been successful. My boss owed him $10000 and he said I he was planing on taking him to court if he didn’t get in contact with him soon. The man asked for a phone number but I refused and gave him his work email instead. Meanwhile I was also calling my boss and sending him text to let him know what was going on. We discovered that my boss had blocked the man’s email as he couldn’t get any messages to send through.
My boss called me twice just to yell at me and tell me how stupid I am for doing that, that I shouldn’t have given away his personal information. I was still with this man and I started to cry as I don’t do well when people yell at me and I find being called stupid very triggering. The man was trying to comfort me, saying that I didn’t do anything wrong. He got on the phone with his buddy telling him that my boss just made me cry, has blocked his email and that maybe they should just take him to court.
When I left, he kept ignoring my text and emails about my pay he owed me. I bet he was expecting me to give up like his past employees did, but i didn’t. Took a few months and some calls with fair work but eventually I got the money he owed me.
I’m could go on with my time there but I’m trying to keep it short if there’s any spelling or grammar mistakes. It was being very laggy