Everyone should know that unless you are a salaried employee and give up overtime or double time pay as part of your employment agreement, you are owed overtime pay for every minute past 40 hours/week.

Some people don’t, or they need their job too bad to rock the boat, though.

OP worked at a company where morale was not exactly a big concern.

I had a job working warehouse/delivery for a store.

The entire “corporate structure” was built on treating the people below you like crap, and that was passed down through every level. Managers would just bark orders and bawl you out for any reason they could think of.

They paid about 25¢ over minimum wage, and the bosses drove BMWs and Mercedes. The Big Boss lived in an $8M house.

When he learned some of the truckers weren’t being paid (significant) overtime, he encouraged them to file a complaint.

Our store was the freight hub for four others in the little chain, so we got to know the drivers from the other stores well as they were always coming to load freight or drop stuff off.

One day, we’re sitting with two drivers from another store, and “Buddy” remarks that he and his partner are working over 60 hours a week. I say he must be doing okay with all that overtime pay. He says they’re not getting OT, just paid a straight time rate.

I ask him if he signed an averaging agreement, he says no. He shows me his pay stub, and there it is. His partner comes back and confirms all this, and they’ve been doing it for months.

He’d asked his manager about OT, and been told that straight pay was just the way it worked. I tell them that’s illegal, and urge them to take it to labour relations.

They’re reluctant to rock the boat, figuring they’ll be fired. So I drop it. (We never got any overtime. Our warehouse was busy, our store was not.)

Once one of them was ready to quit, he took OP’s advice.

A couple months later, they’re in again, and Buddy’s partner tells us he and his girlfriend are moving back east, and he’s giving his notice.

I tell him again to file a complaint; nothing to lose now. So he does.

Lucky for the payroll guy, he had receipts of his own.

A few weeks go by, and when I come in one day, there are expensive boss cars parked all along the loading dock.

My workmate says something big is going down. All the managers have been summoned, and are inside with a bunch of people in suits. So we wander upstairs to see what’s going on.

The company bookkeeper had an office in our store, and handled all the payroll. He was a Chinese immigrant, nice guy. The bosses were trying to pin this on him, saying he didn’t speak English very well (which was true) and had obviously screwed everything up.

Turns out he was a pretty cagey guy. He knew what they’d told him to do was illegal, and was able to produce all the records of him telling them that, and of them telling him to basically just shut up and do it.

He hands it all over and quits.

So, the right people paid.

I see Buddy (with a new partner) a few weeks later. He’s got a pay stub for about fifteen paychecks’ worth of earnings.

Company got caught for all the overtime pay and a pretty substantial fine on top of that.

And OP was happy to kick them while they were down.

Added bonus: the second-in-command had driven over a nail when he parked his silver BMW on the loading dock and had a flat when he came out of the store.

He opened his trunk and called me over and said, “Change that for me.”

I told him sorry, that’s not my job and if I hurt myself, my compensation claim would be denied.

As he went in to call a tow truck, I stood on the loading dock and gazed upon all the havoc I had wrought, and my heart was glad.

I definitely love the ending – does Reddit?

It just takes one person to stand up for themselves.

Companies certainly shouldn’t get away with it.

What they were doing was definitely illegal.

In fact, they should have gone to jail.

Some people say they likely paid, though.

This is quite the satisfying story.

I am so happy for everyone who worked there.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.