So I'm a mechanic. I was in school for this for 3 years while in prison. Not a tremendous amount of experience but i know what I'm doing and I can follow directions. I got out this year and got a job a an independent shop. After a 1 week “trail” they hired me at $15 which is minimum wage for companies with over 25 employees. They don't so minimum would be 14 for them. They said that I'm “pretty green”. It's 40 hours a week. No real overtime to speak of.
Pay is every Friday for the week prior. At the end of my second week, theyre doing payroll and ask me what time i actually started working after setting up my tool box on my first day Monday. First red flag. i said around 9:30 or 10. I arrived on time for the 8am shift start. They said they'd round it down in their favor in a joking sort of way. I get the check and they really did round it down to 38 hours. After this i installed an app to track my hours. I punch in and out on the app every day.
OT happens when we stay late finishing up work and parking cars inside for the night. My 3rd week we ended up staying late a total of 40 minutes. I left them know on payday and confirmed 2x thats what I recorded in my app. My check only reflected 20 minutes of OT. It's only like $7 so I just ignored it that time.
Few more weeks and more OT. I recorded something like 1.75 hours of OT. boss complains that no one else is submitting that much OT. I show him my hours in the app. Including deducting 2 or 3 minutes here and there if i arrived at 8 but didn't actually start for a couple minutes. They grudgingly pay it but the next week announce they don't want to be paying overtime for just parking cars and we would start shutting down for the day earlier from now on. No more OT.
I continue tracking my hours and I record times I'm a few minutes late but the boss says they're not worried about it and 40 hours is fine. After a month or so I stop bothering to record hours as every paycheck is 40 hours.
Down the road a bit, we might leave early 10-15 once or twice if we finish early. But after that they start “making up for it” by keeping us a bit late here and there but no OT is paid.
Last week's check (for the week prior) had no OT even though we stayed late as much as 40 minutes one time. And this last work week we had even more late days.
So this morning I'm working on a car. Diagnosing some off the wall issue (they expect diagnosing skills but pay lube tech rates) and they tell me they're gonna track how much labor hours i actually produce and pay me accordingly. If I don't produce 40 hours, maybe I should look for a new job.
In mechanics, this is called flat rate. A repair is worth 4 hours, so the tech gets paid 4 hours regardless of how slow or fast it's done. The this is flat rate pay in this area should be around $23-$35.
I wait until lunch and follow up asking if it's gonna be flat rate at the same hourly rate. They say yes. So I know I only produce maybe 20-25 hours a week. So it's a no deal. I let him know thats not what they hired me to do so I would just pack up my tools. He says “let's discuss this after lunch” i decline. He says they can't pay me 40 hours if i don't generate 40 hours. I counter that their labor rate they charge is $120/h. I only have to produce 1 hour per day to cover my check. After that the rest is theirs. Not to mention what they make on parts. He says I'm thinking of it wrong and they have overhead costs. I mention that I have friends who work at taco bell for $17/h. I send 1/3 of my check every week on tools. I don't want to argue so I get to packing and let them know I appreciate the opportunity they gave me and everything I've learned from them. (I'm trying to be nice). He gets snarky with my about “maybe show up on time everyday to your next job”. I finished packing up and left. Came back for my tool box a little late in a van i borrowed. So I'm looking for a new place now. Somewhere that will somewhat value what I contribute.
So thanks for listening/reading. I'm new to this sub so maybe this isn't even on topic anyways.