I am based out of NY for the context of law. Long story short I was the backbone of the BOH of this particular location, the micro aggressions, favoritism, and bullying had proven to be far too much for me to carry on employment. The final straw was a mixture of hearing that I was only paid 10 cents more than everyone else, including our dishwasher, for what was an assistant management level job. I did inventory, line checks, etc etc and was essentially the leader of the kitchen since my management team is all women with FOH background and one old man who is useless everywhere but the office. I find out about this on a Friday, they decide that their company bonus is more important than not burning employees out they decide we do not need a dishwasher unless it is Friday or Saturday night. We are a high volume restaurant in a small town with maybe 4 restaurants to choose from, even on Mondays we will break 10k in sales sometimes, but minimum is 5k easily. After working my 4th open to close shift, I mistakenly left dishes soaking in our 3 bay with scout from ecolab as the soap solution. I wake up to a group message created via Facebook messenger, with everyone from the restaurant and all of our female managers chastising and berating me for the dishes that were left. I immediately resigned after discovering this on my day off. These fuckers decide to withhold my last paycheck by deleting the hours I worked (two shifts) in Kronos. I have contacted the labor board as well as the company's human resources and filed complaints to both. I also heard from other tipped employees that they were being shorted cash from switching job codes mid shift, ie:Togo personnel make server wages, but they want that same person to finish as a host and forgo tips for the last two hours. Their way of compensating was gift cards to our own restaurant.
TLDR: Left toxic environment without notice, and my employer decides that I just don't paid the last 16 hours I worked. Reported to DOL as well as corporate HR. Are there any other avenues I should take? I don't care about the money, I want them penalized over principality at this point. Curious to hear any success/failure stories. Thanks!