Here’s some background. The temp agency continues to fuck with me. I was supposed to be payed today, but when I checked my email Friday night I got an form email saying there will be “a delay” with my paycheck due “an error on the payroll file due to which the data could not be processed in a timely manner” and asking for my support & cooperation". :rolleyes: The email was sent out after 5pm and naturally I wasn’t able to get a hold of anyone over the weekend so I had to settle for sending an email saying they have neither, expressing my disgust, and threatening legal action.
Monday morning I got another form email saying they’re trying to resolve the situation and don’t anticipate a delay of more than one business day. I finally got through to payroll department on the phone (they’re experiencing high call volume) where a really unsympathetic supervisor told they’re working on it (apparently this is a company wide issue) and I should have my check by Wednesday. I told him if that didn’t happen I’d be filing a report with the labor dept. he sarcastically said “you do that.”
Then I got another mass email this evening saying Wednesday the 19th is the earliest they expect employees to receive their pay. :mad: Fuck it, the local labor dept. office was already closed when I called today, but I’m filing a complaint tomorrow. I’ve never had a problem getting paid like this at any place I’ve ever worked (& that included some really crappy jobs, even the under the table ones). There’s no possible excuse or justification for them to do this, and I’m really starting to wonder if this really technical problem or something far worse is going on with payroll.
Not being paid does indeed suck sweaty gorilla balls, but fer cryin’ out loud, do you really think that the guy on the other end of your ranting phone call, as an individual, was in any way involved with malfeasance related to your late paycheck?
Dumping on him isn’t going to get you paid any faster…unless he’s actually the guy who writes and signs the checks. It just makes a shitty situation worse by adding childish ranting into it.
There are some things in life that only have one method of fighting - discontinuing your association with them. Tough break that it’s your job in this case…update us if your “complaint” ever goes anywhere worth talking about. I do doubt it though :rolleyes:
I recently had to file a wage claim with the Board of Labor in my state which was resolved in my favor. I had to supply evidence of some sort that I wasn’t being paid, and then the (now former) employer had their say. The entire process took about two months, so just be aware it’s not an instant fix.
At this point, with just a couple days delay (if I’m reading your post correctly) and it affecting the entire company, and the employer saying they’re working on it, I don’t think you’ll get much traction. But go ahead and contact the Labor Board anyway, ask what sort of documentation you’d need for a claim, and so on. Meanwhile, document what’s going on, dates, times, who you contact at the company, and so on just in case you wind up filing a claim later. The more organized and coherent you can make your side of the argument the better.
Get your venom out here - when you talk to people on the phone or in e-mail you need to stay calm, cool, and collected.
Meanwhile, you might start looking for alternative employment.
A company that makes its profits from employing temps shouldn’t have 4 day payroll problems. Top that off with a manager that is unsympathetic and sarcastic and shit hits the fan.
And people who are situated so that they are working temp jobs are more inclined to need their cash flow work like it is promised. This isn’t an inconvenience. It’s a financial smack in the face.
Uber I know the problems of the peasants may be vulgar to you. Maybe mommy can explain it to you by withholding your allowance past the day of the week that she gives it to you.
And computers should never crash, data files should never get corrupted, I should never get a speeding ticket. Lots of things should never happen but do.
The manager probably acted that way for 2 reasons
Yours was the 47th rendition of the exact same call. It does get old.
Time spent on the phone with you is time not being spent fixing the issue.
I recently watched a documentary about the changeover day on cruise ships…the day when they off-load one group of passengers and board another group.
On every cruise, there are some people that forget their passports or show up with problematic documentation… newly married women with name changes and children without the proper parental permissions being the most common.
And some times the problems aren’t resolved and the passengers are left at port watching the ship sail away without them.
The manager that has to handle these problems said something to the effect of – " It’s especially difficult when the people are nice about it, then it makes me feel REALLY bad to have to leave them behind."
So rant all you want, but it may have the opposite effect then the one you intended.
I haven’t worked for them for almost a month, and I am starting a new (non-temp) job next week. Like I said I’ve never had a problem like this with an employer. The only other time I’ve had a paycheck delayed was at my first job when I was 16; that was due to a mistake with the tax form and it was at a supermarket so they were able to give me a cash advance. I already burned my bridges with this agency when I had to deal with their screw-up of my direct deposit while taking my aunt. Plus I’m still recovering from all the stress of dealing with hospice, death, funeral planning, and some on-going family drama.
I’ve worked as a temp for about 15 years now, and I’ve never had a problem with payroll with them, either. It really is their business to deal with a lot of payroll, on a very frequent basis (weekly), and get it right. I think something’s fishy here, too - if the payroll file won’t upload right or something, then you call it in manually. Between alphaboi’s unexpected firing and these payroll delays, I think there is something going on.
You have my sympathy, alphaboi, and support. I think you’re going the right way, talking to your local labour board, but as broomstick says, document, document, document, and be prepared for it to take a long time, unfortunately.
Well, maybe. Notice that manager didn’t say that people who were nice about it actually got to go. So, being nice makes the manager like you. But it doesn’t actually solve the problem.
If the file isn’t working and it’s going to take days to fix, you get on the damn phone with every supervisor and start cutting checks by hand.
I am self employed. If I had some computer/bookkeeping problem delay a payday, I would withdraw enough cash to pay everyone about what they should get.
When I worked for someone else, the only reason I did my job was to get paid. A delay of any sort and I woulda gone ballistic.
If you’re running a business and don’t have backup and/or redundancy in your cash-flow system you deserve the hell that you cause for yourself
C’mon, we know your rep. With those mad mechanic skills your machine should be able to outrun the po-po
You owe 47 (most likely low income) people money. You should expect 47 calls when you’re 4 days late. Or, you’re a temp agency, bring in a temp to answer the phone and apologize…a lot.
I worked for Carnival and Royal Caribbean for 3 years as a check-in agent. If the passengers would have read the damn ticket books that we sent them, nobody would have been left behind.
They became aware of the problem on Friday, which seems to be when they prepare the paystubs and send any paper checks out. I wasn’t able to get a hold of anyone until Monday and in the space of 2 emails and 1 phone the it’s gone from a delay of 1 business day to I’ll definitely be payed Wednesday to Wednesday is the earliest they expect employees to be able to access their pay. I just got another email, this time from an HR manager, again apologizing for the delay and saying they’re working on it. She didn’t give a timeframe at all, but did ask people not to contact the client. Not being able to get a straight answer or a definite paydate is what’s really frustrating.
BTW looking through the website I noticed that this company offers payroll processing services in addition to temp workers. :dubious: Ironic, isn’t it? Also I got a callback from the Wage & Hour Division and started the complaint process.
Not that it matters at this point, but I had a temp agency terminate me in a similar fashion as yours a bunch of years back. I had been on the job just a few days and it was going fine. It was pretty easy work and I know I was doing a good job of it. One day a lady that sat near my desk, a full-time supervisor (though not my supervisor), talked about how her daughter had just called and had just lost her job and was freaking out about what she was going to do. The next day I got a call saying that I had “many” performance issues and they were ending my assignment. The job was so easy that this just couldn’t have been true (and nothing was ever said to me in the short time I was there.) I’m pretty certain that they hired the woman’s daughter to take over for me.
All of that to say that it sucks it happened to you, but it’s very likely that you didn’t nothing wrong performance-wise and they just wanted to make a change, for whatever reason.
Of course. And, failing to meet the requirements, there was nothing they could say or do to the dockside employee that was going to get them on the boat.
I was simply pointing out that “employee likes you” is not equivalent to “getting what you want”. Sometimes yelling about something will accomplish the latter, but not the former. And sometimes it won’t.
In this case, yelling at some guy might make him kick it up to someone with the authority to bypass the (in this case) broken normal system and actually fix the problem. Or it might not.
Hmmm, I smell dead fish. In my state, you have to hand the terminated employee a check. Not next payroll cycle, not next week, THEN. Failure to do so generates penalties that start at treble damages, and have known to go up from there.
Whacking employees is done with great care, least they reach from beyond the employment and have their revenge.
My guess is that the temp agency would argue that OP was not terminated from employment - just from an assignment. I temped for about a year when I first graduated from college, and while I didn’t always like assignments (and many ended either before or long after I would have liked them to), I always got paid promptly. If the check was ever late, it was due to me not turning in the time sheet promptly. Temp agencies are - or should be, if they want to remain competitive - in the business of quick payroll turn around for their staff. I don’t blame OP for being upset, and it’s probably particularly stressful given the work and OP’s personal circumstances.
OP: if you incur overdraft fees as a result of timely deposit not being made, you might have a compelling argument for temp agency to cover those fees. Worth a shot.
When I temped, I viewed myself as completely expendable and did not take early termination from assignment personally. I always showed up on time, neatly attired, accepted instruction, and did my glamorous and exciting filing or typing or answering phones as efficiently as I understood the job to be (and asked for clarification if unsure). Most of the employees for the companies I reported to didn’t view me so much as expendible - more like, downright non-existent. If I didn’t catch on to a task immediately, they didn’t want to waste the time to train me. I was terminated from several assignments. I kept a good line of communication open with my real bosses – the people who found assignments for me – and made sure that I always showed up. That kept me employed.
It is just a fact that you are persona non grata to the reporting employer. They will not invest a moment of discomfort or a second explanation to a temp. The only companies that treated me humanely were for longer term assignments. Not to say that I was ever treated poorly. Just as very, very … transient. If I couldn’t figure out a complex filing system on my own, or after minimal instruction, they knew the next temp might be a “brighter bulb” than I.
I kept my sanity by constantly reminding myself that it was temporary for me, too. Just a means to an end until I found a good job… Not just the first to come along that I would accept out of desperation. To that end, it worked well for me.