Pexels

Neurodiverse folk, including those who are high-functioning, are living life on hard mode. Because even though they might look and act totally normal, no one else knows what is going on inside their bodies or their brains. But at the grocery store, in the workplace, at places of worship – and even in our homes (at least sometime) – we’re expected to act ‘normal’ and be like other folk, even though so much in our own minds is completely different.

So when the Redditor in this story tried to decide how to get a job that would work for them. And it got off to a good start – until one day, out of the blue, they got an ominous message from their boss – followed by a whole heap of disappointment.

Read on to find out what happened.

I reported my former boss to the department of labor

I got fired from my house cleaning job about four weeks ago.

The day my boss fired me, she texted me to tell me that she mailed out a check to me. She told me that it would arrive in one to three days, and it didn’t. She told me to keep her updated.

I waited five days after she fired me for the check to arrive, but it didn’t come. I texted her to let her know that I didn’t receive the check, and she told me that she would send me a replacement check, and she told me she’d update me when it was sent.

She didn’t do that though. I had to ask her five days later if she sent out the replacement check, and she said she sent it out that morning.

Let’s see whether the check ever turned up.

I waited six days after that, and that check also didn’t arrive, so on Monday, I filled out a DSLE form and reported her to my local labor department office. I stopped reaching out to her because I didn’t trust a thing she said anymore.

I spoke to my therapist about this, and she told me that she was definitely stringing me along. My therapist was a house cleaner for over twenty years, and she said one of her bosses did the same thing to her after they fired her.

She said that she’s withholding my last paycheck from me because she feels like I owe her money for all of the mistakes I made on the job, which is so petty and immature.

I’m glad I got some insight from her, because that was what motivated me to report her to the labor department. I was already considering it before that, but I didn’t want to assume the worst or jump to conclusions.

Read on to find out how this person is feeling about this situation now.

This is my first time pursuing any sort of legal action against someone, and this was also my first time working as a house cleaner. I got fired after working with her for a month and a half.

I thought that this would’ve been a better job opportunity for me since I’m a high-masking autistic person, and I just wanted to find a job where I could focus on what I needed to do without having to interact with a lot of people. I was completely wrong about that.

Before I submitted my papers to the labor department office, I was incredibly nervous since I had never done that before, but I felt so much better after I did it.

I’ve always struggled to advocate for myself out of fear of what might happen, but I actually did something that I was so scared of doing, and I’m proud I did it.

Good for this person, for standing up for themselves.

Even if things didn’t go well as a house cleaner, they’ve still worked and deserve to be paid in full.

Meanwhile, the woman is stringing them along and gaslighting them, which is never acceptable.

Let’s see what the Reddit community made of this.

This person congratulated the cleaner on standing up for themselves.

While others urged them not to give up.

Meanwhile, this Redditor thought there was a chance that the old boss might owe even more now.

It’s as if the woman thinks that the cleaner will just go away, unpaid, if she continues to take so long getting a check to them. Sure, that could be the case – particularly if she’s picked up that her ex-cleaner was non-confrontational and suspects they won’t stand up for themselves. But this is not the case, and it seems like the woman is on the cusp of landing herself in a lot of hot water.

In the end, the cleaner has given up plenty of time and probably used up plenty of products too, all to get the home looking and smelling great. Of course, they are new to the business and there’s always going to be some hiccups – and that’s clearly what has happened here – but you don’t learn and develop without making a few mistakes every now and then. Luckily for this person, there is a clear route to follow. Because they’ve done the work, so they deserve to get paid.