December 7, 2023 at 9:24 am

This Worker Didn’t Get Paid So They Got the Company Shut Down. – ‘They got fined upwards of $50,000.’

by Matthew Gilligan

Source: Reddit/AITA/Unsplash/@nci

What do people think is going to happen if they don’t pay their employees?

It’s gonna get UGLY!

And the person who wrote this story on Reddit’s “Pro Revenge” page wasn’t playing around!

It all started when they got a job at a plumbing company…

Boss wouldn’t pay me the money I earned, so I had his company shut down (and other **** you moments).

“Last year I started working for a local plumbing company that seemed promising. Would pay top dollar to employees for good old fashioned labor. So I signed my W-2 and went on my way. Seems legit, right?

It sounded like a great gig!

I started out making an hourly wage, was given my own work van and was offered a work cellphone. However, if you used your personal cellphone, the owner of the company would pay your bill because you’re using your own phone! How neat is that?

They noticed something about their paychecks.

Fast forward a month or two. I was forced to make commission based off of every job and I didn’t have a say in this. But 20% of every job you go to? Hell that’s a lot of money in plumbing! So I was none the wiser. Eventually I found out that my paychecks weren’t having any taxes taken out of them. So I asked my boss

“Why am I not having taxes taken out of my check?”

To which he replied: “When we switched you to commission, you’re a subcontractor now. You’re 1099! You’re gonna be making so much bank now, bro.”

Hmmm…

Didn’t sign a 1099 form but ok.

Then things changed in a hurry.

As the time went on, I started working 90 hour weeks with no break. If my phone was turned off and the office folk tried to reach me and couldn’t, they would take money out of my paycheck. The phone bill? Never got paid. There would be days where I wouldn’t make a single dime because the boss would mess something up in our system.

They decided they’d had enough.

We also had no heat in our vans and when it got to -14° outside his words to us were “Go buy a blanket. I can’t afford repairs like this right now” while he is in Florida on a cruise with his whole family. So like anyone else, I just up and quit. **** that.

When I left, I asked for my checks (I was owed 3 of them for the weeks I worked) but my boss wasn’t ready to give them up yet.

This guy was a real creep.

So they did some research.

I took to r/legaladvice (bless them) and asked what I should do. The responses led me to LARA (Department of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs) to file a wage claim to get my money. But on top of that, I filed a report with them stating the company doesn’t pull permits (which is required to do) when replacing people’s plumbing. So they sent over an investigator to check these claims out.

And it was time to get the IRS involved.

I then went to the IRS to find out about this whole tax ordeal. I filed the proper paperwork to have the IRS check and see if I was misclassified as a 1099 employee when I should have been a W-2 employee since they weren’t taking taxes out. SURE AS **** I was wrongfully not getting taxes taken out of my checks. So the IRS sent an investigator of their own.

This company was not on the up-and-up.

Now at this point I see on my phone that I still have their email address linked to my Google account. So I do some snooping. It turns out they haven’t paid city taxes in over 6 years and that the office manager (a woman who has verbally abused me time and time again) collects disability through the state but still collects a 1.5k paycheck from the company every week. You can I sent that in with the IRS. Screenshots included in my email.

This is how it all unfolded.

He has someone on the inside.

I have a friend that still works (or rather worked for them at the time) and he told me about the investigators coming in. They got fined upwards of $50,000 for failing to produce the proper permits for work that was performed.

And they ended up getting PAID!

They also paid me what the company owed me WITH INTEREST since I waited over a month for those checks. On top of all of this, the IRS made them pay for my taxes at the end of the year, took away the office manager’s disability, audited them because they haven’t paid city taxes and fined them for each employee they did this to.

At this time as well, all of his fleet vans broke due to wear and tear. This resulted in the company closing.

When he asked me why I did all of this my response was simply:

“You ****** me over, so I ****** you over.””

Now let’s see what folks had to say about this.

One person made an interesting point.

Source: Reddit/AITA

This Reddit user talked about her husband who is a plumber.

Source: Reddit/AITA

One individual is thinking about doing the same thing to their boss…

Source: Reddit/AITA

And one Reddit user was impressed and wondered how much money the boss lost because of this…

Source: Reddit/AITA

Pay your employees!

Or else something terrible like this might happen to you…