For quite some time, I had been an unemployed PC technician, so I was thrilled when I landed a job at a local computer store. Some days they’d have me working in the showroom helping customers, and others they’d put me in the back fixing computers.
Now, I should have known something was fishy about this place when the owner never had me fill out a W4, and never asked for my driver’s license or any other form of identification. My “paychecks” ended up being envelopes full of cash. I was also told that I could work overtime, but even though I was not a salaried employee, I would not get time-and-a-half for those hours. Oh, and he had two seven-year old boys working at least twenty hours a week at his store emptying trash cans, vacuuming floors, and other light work. How many labor laws is he violating there?
I ignored my instincts, though, since I was so desperate for work. I ended up liking the job and my co-workers, so it didn’t seem to matter after a while.
Then, midway through my fourth week, three pricey laptops went missing from the warehouse within a very narrow timeframe. I didn’t even enter the warehouse during that time and was, in fact, in full view of two co-workers the whole time.
The store has security cameras by both of its doors, so the owner told me the matter would be resolved quickly, and that we’d all be questioned by the police. He also said that nobody working at the time could come back to work until the guilty party was flushed out. Fair enough, I guess.
However, when I came in the next day to pick up my wad of cash, I found that everyone but me was already back at work, including the two guys who were in the warehouse the whole damn time! WTF?!
I tried calling to ask for an explanation, but he refused to take my call. I emailed, but he avoided all but my most trivial questions in his responses. He left me twisting in the wind without work for two weeks. I never got questioned by the police, despite my repeated requests to have it done.
I was burning with rage, but did my best to keep it in check in my email correspondence with him. I even offered suggestions (e.g. perhaps the thief hid the laptops in the warehouse so he could wait to remove them until a time when he knew nobody would be checking the security footage). Hell, I even volunteered to take a polygraph, despite the fact that I’m naturally a fairly nervous person, and a false-positive could implicate me. Hey, I was desperate.
All of this was met with total indifference. I was later fired via email.
Fired for no fucking reason. Nobody had ever expressed dissatisfaction with the quality of my work, and I was helpful and friendly to both the customers and my co-workers. I’m so confused by this whole situation that I find myself unable to formulate a Pit-worthy string of expletives to describe how I feel about this asshole.
sigh
Out of work again. Anyone in the Harrisburg/Lancaster/York area looking for a PC tech with an A.S. in Networking? Hell, I’d be happy to even get a data entry job at this point.
I’d like to get some kind of legal and ethical revenge on this bastard. I’ve thought about reporting his business practices to the PA Department of Labor, but word travels fast in tech circles around here, and I’m afraid that all I’d accomplish by doing so is make myself unemployable.
What do you guys think?