He Ran a Multi-State Franchise Empire Built on Stolen Postage and Unpaid Overtime—Then an Audit Dossier Triggered a Simultaneous Postal Inspection and Federal Labor Raid
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When you’re young and new to the working world, it’s easy to overlook some red flags when you’re applying for a job. After all, you probably don’t realize they’re red flags at all.
Unfortunately, some business owners take advantage of that to take advantage of their employees and their customers.
In this story, an employee at a shipping company franchise now realizes he ignored multiple red flags before he finally started to realize there was a big problem. At that point, he was so mad he did everything in his power to try to get his boss in big trouble with a major client and corporate.
Keep reading to see how the story plays out.
Owner Screws Me Over, Screws UP(S) His Business
To start, I won’t be saying the name of the shipping company franchise I worked for, suffice to say the title is very telling.
The Backstory ———————
About five or six years ago I was relatively new to the workforce, having worked one minimum wage job at Mickey D’s. I had been there almost two years, but had little experience elsewhere.
It sounded like a good idea at the time.
Well this one lady always came through early every morning to order a large Diet Coke, and would take a few minutes to talk to me.
I mentioned to her that I was displeased with my bosses and the working conditions, and she invited me to come apply for a job at Not FedEx because they were always running low on employees!
That should have been my first red flag.
He didn’t see the second red flag either.
The second red flag went completely over my head, because at this point I was 17 with no previous job experience.
When I walked in for an interview, the boss (who I will call Jeph, because it sounds close enough to his name to allow him to remain anonymous) told me it would take five minutes. I wasn’t asked about my relevant experience, my goals within the company, or even told what position I was applying for.
I assumed all interviews were different and went along with it, and started the next week with training.
Everything went well for the first month. I basically just packed boxes, took down customer information, and sorted mail into the mailboxes we managed.
Uh, this isn’t what he signed up for.
The real trouble started after I was given my one month performance review.
I was deemed to be a valuable asset to Jeph’s franchise, and rightfully so. At 17 I was able to lift more and work better than the 20 and 30 something employees, and due to the work ethic my parents drilled into me I was never slacking off while at work.
I was then informed that I would be swapping between Jeph’s two franchises, roughly 30 miles apart. (For context, the franchise I APPLIED TO WORK AT was roughly a mile from my house, so I could walk if I couldn’t get a ride.)
Every other day I had to drive out to the location and somehow justify this with my slightly above minimum wage job. ($7.50 for those not in Texas.)
The boss sounds awful.
Overall my boss was a massive jerk. His physical appearance could best be described as “troll like” with a shirt almost bursting, the top always undone to showcase his aging chest hair, and a face not unlike that of A&F owner Mike Jeffries.
He openly cheated on his wife, bragging to coworkers about it constantly.
He charged people one dollar for any amount of extra tape they needed on their package, despite the fact that we got roughly two rolls for that price in bulk.
He had a special price calculator installed on the computers that charged people roughly 10% more than the package would be elsewhere.
What a liar and a bully!
He would push employees (who he insisted didn’t work in customer service but sales) to never offer anything less than three day shipping even though we offered standard 7+ days and even cheaper options.
I watched him actively lie to customers, claiming it was the price they had to pay blah blah blah, and almost yell at them to go to another store if they didn’t like it.
But I digress.
The boss was really sneaky.
Now here was the first awful thing that my boss did to me specifically.
Until this point, I was only working around 20 hours. After I graduated to working at both stores, Jeph had me sign a brand new W-2 for his second store, which was under a different company. (He owned both, naming one Blue (name for a .44 caliber bullet) and Blue (proper name for visible light)).
Again, I had very little idea that this wrong because I had never had to deal with this before.
He proceed to add another 20 or so hours to my schedule, bringing me up to 40 hours or more. But since I worked for two separate companies I never earned a dime of overtime or benefits of any kind.
OP was really doing a lot of work.
At this point, I started accruing more and more duties, as my boss and coworkers started to trust me more and more.
Buy my fourth month of employment (out of a total of eight) I was performing managerial duties such as: opening the store, counting the registers, closing the store, ordering product such as boxes and tape, and preparing shipments for transport.
The work alone justified a raise, not to mention the hours I was being asked to work.
However when I floated this idea by my boss, he very rudely insisted that since he had a manager for each store already, I was just doing my job and couldn’t earn a cent more.
This sounds like a really big contract.
Then came the second awful move.
We had a large company contract some drop off stuff with us, a telecom company we will say rhymes with Hey Tea and Tea. Customers would bring in their old cable boxes, wires, remotes and the like, and we would scan them and ship them back to Hey Tea and Tea, the company THAT LEGALLY OWNED ALL OF THIS HARDWARE.
The customers would not pay us a nickel, but the telecom company would pay almost double what it actually cost to ship the package.
There is no way Jeph could look that gift horse in the mouth and decide he was still owed the stable and all the horse’s tack as well, right?
Yikes! Now, he’s stealing.
Surprise, surprise, Jeph had to take it one step further. ANY and ALL parts/cables/WiFi adapters/USB drives the customer returned to us that didn’t have a scan tag on them, Jeph would pull aside and either strip for copper or sell on eBay.
And he would force us, the employees to package his eBay sales or copper wiring into boxes and ship them for him.
He even popped batteries out of remotes and recycled them somewhere to get a tax credit.
None of his employees ever saw a penny of this money (not that I would have accepted it). We estimated he raked in roughly three to four thousand a month just from stealing alone.
That’s a lot of money!
For those of you bad at math, that is the price of TWO brand new 2018 Honda Civics.
The Revenge ———————
The third (and fourth) final awful moves are what solidified my hatred for this boss, and my desire to strike back.
They both came in the same week, roughly the same time, and both viscerally repulsive.
Oh no! This sounds illegal!
My favorite coworker had recently gotten pregnant, and although the father got the hell out of dodge when he found out, she was doing very well for herself.
She and I frequently closed together, and she promised she would bring the baby to sit in the back for the dull hours we had to kill from 6-10.
We also had an annual store review from corporate that week, so our boss called a late night meeting after we closed one day. Our boss started out by saying that he was proud of our pregnant coworker for working so hard even with her “disability.” (Yes, even his sense of humor was slimy.)
Then, in front of all fifteen employees, HE FIRED HER. He told her that because the Christmas season was coming up, and she would only slow down the store being pregnant and all, he had to let her go.
He was out for revenge.
After she left, hatred seething in her eyes, he turned back to the fourteen of us who were left stunned, and continued on like nothing had happened.
He proceeded to tell each of us our jobs for this weekend, leaving mine for last. My job, because I used to drive a decently sized mini van, was to ferry the corporate required supplies, cash for the safe, and OUR ONE WORKING FIRE EXTINGUISHER between the two stores while he kept corporate distracted between visits.
At this point I had taken enough garbage from this guy, and I formulated my plan.
Timing is important here.
I started by calling the Hey Tea and Tea fraud department, and telling them everything I knew. I took pictures and emailed them directly to the rep I was talking to, who seemed a little too excited about fraud being committed.
I then scheduled a visit from a Hey Tea and Tea rep at the same time corporate was supposed to show up.
My next step was to call Not FedEx and explain exactly what I just told y’all, with a few extra things thrown in that I couldn’t share for privacy reasons.
They promised to send a rep as well, to the same store, at the same time.
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He did not follow his boss’s orders as directed.
The final step was put into action that Saturday. I dutifully loaded up my van with the supplies, cash (upwards of $4000 if I remember correctly), and fire extinguisher, and headed out.
Except I did the exact OPPOSITE of what Jeph wanted.
I took the stuff to the first store he owned, which was the second one to receive a visit.
After he texted the team saying they were moving on, I packed up all the stuff and drove it to the other store they just left.
His coworkers filled him in on what happened.
Now I am unsure exactly what happened at the other store, but from some coworkers I pieced together that the Not FedEx rep showed up right after I left, but didn’t stay long, and the Hey Tea and Tea rep showed up just before Jeph had arrived and had time to hide his ill gotten gains in his office.
The one coworker who was close enough to the office during the corporate meeting said there was lots of angry words being thrown and threats being made towards Jeph and his position as a franchisee.
He also lost his franchises the ability to ship for Hey Tea and Tea, at least for a period of time.
Yikes! This is uncalled for!
Regardless, the very next day I was off because I was (and as cliché as this sounds I swear to God it’s true) helping my grandfather who just got out of the hospital.
I receive a call from Jeph, saying I needed to come in right away, and work a double shift as well as close the store.
I told him I couldn’t do that, and I was taking a personal day.
He fired me right then and there, citing my usage of the work computer to run a photoshop business during work hours. (I’m assuming he was referring to the graphic design work I did FOR HIM, FOR FREE, which he asked me to learn how to do.)
The ending is a little disappointing.
The sad epilogue to this whole story is that he is currently still in business, and still running the same scams he was before.
He WAS however fined for not having proper supplies in his stores, as well as forced to use corporate’s package rates rather than his own.
So in some small way my revenge worked.
He currently has a two star review on Yelp for both of his his businesses, and I hope to have a party outside his store one day when it goes belly up.
Man, I was hoping he’d be out of business and possibly in jail.
Let’s see how Reddit responded.
I feel sad about the ending too.
It is pretty weird.
I would think it’s illegal.
If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who decides to mute her boss’s number after he insists on calling her at home after hours.
Another person thinks the pregnant woman needs to sue.
OP needs to convince his pregnant friend to sue. That would be the best way to get the boss in trouble. What he did was wrong, but there were witnesses.
Obviously, the boss in this story did a lot of illegal things, but firing a pregnant woman because she was pregnant would be the easiest thing to prove.
That guy needs to be put out of business.
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