Little update, last Friday would have been my final pay period, and nothing came through for the couple days I did work during my final week. Plus, I was supposed to be reimbursed for USPS charges to mail her stuff. Despite dealing with the personal crisis, I still completed work on Monday, Tuesday, and a good chunk of Wednesday. I had a per-diem clause in my contract, so I emailed her today to gently say, “Hey, when can I expect this to come through?”
Her response was “you didn’t work these days, you were dealing with your house, no payment is coming”.
So, in response, I forwarded a bunch of publicly available posts, emails I had sent that day detailing work I had done, etc. for those days.
Her response was basically “just because you answered an email or two doesn’t mean you worked a full day. Plus, you worked away from home sometimes, the business didn’t grow enough, and sometimes you took an hour out of the day for therapy. We’re more than even, there is no payment coming, don’t bother me about this again.”
Weird, because as a 1099 contractor, I should have had the freedom to choose my own hours… and since I was telecommuting, I had the ability to work from anywhere (and I was very much still working, even when visiting family out of state)… and also be reimbursed for postage on mailings (which I have in writing that she would do)… and also I did far more than just “answer an email or two” on those days.
And because of all of this, I’m also concerned that I’ll be denied unemployment benefits due to being misclassified.
Long story short, I just sent a very polite email to the DOL asking about misclassification, unemployment insurance, and how to proceed. We’ll see how this all goes.