I am a server in a restaurant, and my employer basically has no shame about using me and my coworkers as cheap labor.
I understand that cleaning during a shift, while I am in rotation to receive tables, is part of my job, as well as reasonable before-shift and after-shift preparation/cleanup. However, what happened today did not fall under any of these categories.
We recently remodeled our building. We were supposed to reopen yesterday, but they weren’t finished yet, so they were shooting for today. I called this afternoon and asked my boss if we were actually opening, and he said “Yeah, I think we’re shooting for 5.” I was scheduled at 3, so I asked him when I should come in… I was expecting 4:30, since we come in at 10:30 when we open at 11. “Oh, just go ahead and come in at 3, we have some cleaning you can do,” he replied. I spent two hours cleaning baseboards, dusting shelves, polishing rails, and cleaning windows for $2.13/hr, while I had no prospect of having any tables or earning any tips to make up the disparity between my wage and the federal minimum. When a coworker of mine asked our boss whether we would be paid hourly since we weren’t serving tables, he said, “Yes. You will be paid hourly. $2.13 an hour.”
This is not an isolated occurrence. When he sees that we are slow and he should send people home, he assigns cleaning duties and won’t allow anyone to be cut until we complete them. The night before we closed, he made all of us stay and move all the tables and equipment in preparation for remodeling, which took us two hours at $2.13/hr.
Is this kind of thing legal? How can I find out? And if it isn’t, how can I do something about it? Is there some way to report it to some agency without hiring a lawyer? I’d love to, but I don’t know how I’d pay one. I’m just tired of being taken advantage of, and I can’t believe he has no qualms about using the people he pays the least to do the hardest work. I don’t want money out of it-- I just want him to learn his lesson, and stop treating his servers like slaves. Any help or guidance would be greatly appreciated.