Imagine working for a store where you often work a lot of overtime. What would you do if the employer didn’t actually pay you for the overtime? Would you be okay with working more hours one week if you could work fewer hours the next week to average out not working overtime over two weeks?

In this story, one employer was hoping the employees would be okay with this setup, and many employees went along with it for a long time. Then, one employee talked to the office manager about the missing overtime and decided to escalate the situation to the US Dept of Labor and a lawyer.

It’s not going to end well for the employer! Let’s read all about it.

My employer owed me $192 in unpaid overtime. They told me why. I sweetly pretended to accept their explanation….

It was an established, respected family art supply store with about a dozen employees that had been in the same location for decades.

Employees were extremely knowledgeable, helpful and valuable, because they knew all the local artists.

We weren’t paid enough— every two weeks.

This is really sneaky.

We’d sometimes work 48 hours wk 1. If that happened they’d cut our hours to <32hrs for wk 2.

Then the sneaky employers averaged both weeks together so they never payed $x1.5 overtime!

The most shocking part to me that as far as I knew no other employees had ever made a stink.

We were ordered to never discuss our pay with other employees. That probably shielded their scammy method.

She took action.

After the office manager condescendingly explained averages to me and sent me on my way, I smiled and thanked her for helping me understand. Hehe.

After that I anonymously called the US Dept of Labor to make inquiries. I ratted out the store by name.

When I googled the dept of labor I found a law firm advertising to help employees cheated out of OT pay. Serendipity!

Then I told a coworker-friend about it and the 2 of us contacted as many current and former employees as we could track. A few were mad, but most said they’d suspected something. All the while, we worked our jobs happily same as always.

The owner couldn’t get out of this one!

One day an auditor from the government came and returned two days in a row.

On day 2, the store’s actual owner, who was always too bougie and foncy to ever darken the door showed up all puffed up and smiley, but left all sweaty with a frown.

Then it was time to meet with the lawyer.

Here’s what the employer ended up having to do.

The government made them pay accumulated retro overtime with interest to every employee they’d ever done this to.

They had to put a notice in the paper, which I know was humiliating for such country club snoots.

There was also big fine. I don’t know exactly because I left to go to grad school.

I heard two long-time employees hired the lawyer and sued not only the store, but the owner and that condescending office manager individually.

The officer manager was the start of the problem.

Bottom line: If when I brought it to her attention the office manager had said “Oops” and paid me my $192, instead of treating me like a child, they could’ve saved what I heard turned into ~$50K.

Cheaters suck, especially rich ones who take advantage of their workers.

I’m sure the office manager was just following orders from higher up. This was probably the store owner’s fault, and they deserved consequences.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who rejects a low contract offer and leaves the company instead.

Let’s see how Reddit responded to this story.

This is a good point.

One person thinks the employer should go to jail.

Another person shares their favorite part of the story.

This person also had to contact the Department of Labor.

The employees did the right thing to band together and refuse to accept not getting paid overtime. They deserved to be paid fairly. Just because the employer got away with illegal payment practices for a long time doesn’t make it right.

I agree with the comment about the social shaming with the newspaper notice being the best part. The $50k may not have even hurt the employer, but having to post a notice in the newspaper would be a blow to their ego and image.

The lesson here is to contact the Department of Labor if you think your employer may not be paying you fairly.