I never thought I would be posting here because I’ve loved my job and the people I work for for the past almost 4 years. But they are now doing things that I cannot looked passed.
I’m 22F working at a family owned Mexican restaurant in California. I got this job because it’s my best friend of 16 years’ family restaurant. I get paid minimum wage but I make great tips so I choose to not complain. The family and I have gotten close and they were always very good to their employees so we were always good to them back.
Here are some things they let us get away with: we showed up late by a few minutes with zero consequences, let us use our phones as long as we were still getting our job done, ask for unlimited days of (they rarely EVER told us no). Just overall understanding people that we all appreciated and respected.
We recently had a meeting because they did not like it anymore that we were showing up late, etc. Things that a business has every right to put their foot down about. But if they’re putting their foot down with us, I cannot let things that they are doing to us go unnoticed.
They have been doing things I believe are illegal but always chose to looked passed because they were very good to us.
For example:
1. Sometimes we didn’t get a break. Even if we work a full 8 hour shift. The restaurant got busy so sometimes there was no time.
2. If we did get a break and it got busy, we were expected to forfeit our break and get up to help. We were not compensated in any way for not taking a break or cutting our break short.
3. We don’t get paid exactly what we work. Let’s say I start work at 8am and leave at 4:15pm. We would get paid exactly 8 hours. Those 15 minutes have been lost. We do not get paid.
4. We do not get paid for over time. I remember bringing it up to them once and they claimed to not know they had to pay overtime.
5. I have 148 hours of sick pay on my check. I never have taken a single hour because they also claim to not know about that.
6. They told the cooks that if they take more than 1.5 hours to clean after we closed they would not be paid for the remaining time it takes them.
7. An employee put her two weeks in last week and our boss told her “just don’t come anymore”. She was not compensated in anyway for not being able to work her remaining two weeks.
This is what I found out yesterday that put a knot in my stomach: I found out that they were audio recording us. One of our bosses told me that they were able to listen to our conversations through the camera. California is a two party state. That’s illegal. My boss told me that because of the audio recording on the camera they found out about the morning shift “talking shit” about them and all the new rules that went down in the meeting. I assume that that’s why they told my coworker to just stop coming to work if she wants to quit. She was part of the morning shift conversation. I cannot believe that our PRIVATE conversations are being recorded and they expect me to not tell anyone this. I cannot let my coworkers keep talking with confidence that it’s a private conversation when they’re always listening.
I guess I just don’t know what to do. I don’t want to get lawyers involved because I really do like them as people. But this restaurant employs a lot of people who are undocumented. So they don’t know their rights and they’re being taken advantage of. And I cannot let all of this go unnoticed. Are the things I mentioned completely legal and I’m just misunderstanding or do I have every reason to be upset?