# WHat are some of the crulest things US employers can do to employees and get away with it? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [October 25, 2013, 10:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252 "2013-10-25T22:24:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![Karrius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/71c47a/32.png) [@Karrius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karrius)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 2:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/81 "2013-10-29T14:19:36Z")
DarkDungeon, while I sympatize, I think you’re making useless attacks here. Sure, the sort of work-study you’re talking about can be great for students. But a lot of these “internships” aren’t for students. I have a 25 year old friend who’s working at a “internship” for no payment, producing usable work, and isn’t being paid because they were told “This is a start-up, and investors don’t like it when employees get paid before a profit is made”. That shit is starting to be really, _really_ common, and needs to stop. It’s exploitive and pretty much slavery, because people can’t find jobs, and are told “if you work as our slave long enough, we might pay you” - and when those people are fed up with waiting, and want to do something unreasonable like be able to afford food, they’re just replaced. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 2:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/82 "2013-10-29T14:22:19Z")
> [@Diceman](#): > > The type of internships you see on movies (where the interns are worked like chattel slaves until they drop and/or have an emotional breakdown, then get fired) is a whole other kettle of fish. That’s just slavery, and it’s evil. But does it actually exist in real life? I left a job paying decent money to do an unpaid internship, and it was very much worth it. That internship helped me land a good job out of college. It’s silly to talk about banning internships. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/83 "2013-10-29T14:23:24Z")
> [@Karrius](#): > > That shit is starting to be really, _really_ common, and needs to stop. It’s exploitive and pretty much slavery, because people can’t find jobs, and are told “if you work as our slave long enough, we might pay you” - and when those people are fed up with waiting, and want to do something unreasonable like be able to afford food, they’re just replaced. Got a cite for this, given how common you think it is? ---
**Author:** ![Czarcasm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/czarcasm/32/4050_2.png) [@Czarcasm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Czarcasm)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 2:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/84 "2013-10-29T14:49:18Z")
Private security officers get the shaft several ways. At most security firms you hire on without even knowing what your pay is going to be. This is because the pay rate is contracted between the security firm and the client, and you have to hire on and go through training before they decide what site you are going to be assigned. You also have no idea what your hours or days will be. If for any reason the client no longer wants you there, then you can immediately be assigned to another site and get whatever pay _they_ contracted for. Another crappy line of work is radio. Here in Portland there was a radio station a few years back that was all local talk. I was listening to an interesting interview the host was having with a local advocate of something or the other, and the host announced a commercial break and told us to stick around for the end of the interview. The commercials finished…and they started playing easy-listening music without explanation. Nobody at the station would pick up the phone, but we later found out that all the on-air personalities and their crew were sent outside the building, given a box with their personal effects and sent home. Thins like this are not rare in the radio business, and while I’m sure it happens in other businesses as well, for radio personalities the only way to go on is to look for another position in another city, selling your home and uprooting your family at a moment’s notice. ---
**Author:** ![Cognoscant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Cognoscant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cognoscant)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/85 "2013-10-29T14:56:39Z")
> [@seal\_cleaner](#): > > Yep, nothing like a zipline ride to improve those people skills! Oh I would have loved a zipline, I’ve never been on one of those. Nope, we all got interviewed one-on-one by a “business skills expert” then were subjected to a two-hour boilerplate PowerPoint which had zero to do with the actual situation at hand, and oops no time for questions afterwards. At this point we’re not even sure that HR or our department head has actually _seen_ the interview answers. On the plus side my interviewer told me I was well-liked by others and had lots of skills and ideas which could really move an office forward. I’m sure “at some other company” was heavily implied there. ---
**Author:** ![Antinor01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecae2f/32.png) [@Antinor01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Antinor01)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 2:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/86 "2013-10-29T14:59:54Z")
> [@John\_Mace](#): > > It’s not true [anywhere in the US.](http://www.dol.gov/dol/topic/wages/wagestips.htm) The difference in CA is that it’s minimum wage plus tips. Not minimum wage including tips. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/87 "2013-10-29T15:02:19Z")
> [@Karrius](#): > > DarkDungeon, while I sympatize, I think you’re making useless attacks here. Can you define “attack” for me? I have made no attacks, just strongly asserted my personal experience in my field and ask that bad experiences not be extrapolated to unpaid internships as a whole. > [@](#): > > Sure, the sort of work-study you’re talking about can be great for students. But a lot of these “internships” aren’t for students. I have a 25 year old friend who’s working at a “internship” for no payment, producing usable work, and isn’t being paid because they were told “This is a start-up, and investors don’t like it when employees get paid before a profit is made”. That shit is starting to be really, _really_ common, and needs to stop. It’s exploitive and pretty much slavery, because people can’t find jobs, and are told “if you work as our slave long enough, we might pay you” - and when those people are fed up with waiting, and want to do something unreasonable like be able to afford food, they’re just replaced. As I’ve said, there are bad internships out there, but to categorically demonize these experiences is absolutely inaccurate and misleading. I cannot speak to how “really really common it is”, but in my experiences running internship programs and coordinating with other who run their own programs we see tremendous positive experiences. If you don’t want me (and others who agree with me) to extrapolate our positive experiences then don’t extrapolate your negative ones categorically either. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/88 "2013-10-29T15:44:49Z")
Well here’s some hard data and it doesn’t look good for you unpaid internship fans: [An NACE survey shows](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/do-unpaid-internships-lead-to-jobs-not-for-college-students/276959/)that unpaid internships do not lead to jobs. Unpaid interns do not do any better than those who have had no internships at all in the job market, and worse than paid interns. Decidedly scammish! In fact, the survey found that: " Among students who found jobs, former unpaid interns were actually offered less money than those with no internship experience." I guess being an unpaid intern must mark you as a sucker, eh? ---
**Author:** ![Karrius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/71c47a/32.png) [@Karrius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karrius)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/89 "2013-10-29T16:10:20Z")
> [@DarkDungeonDenizen](#): > > Can you define “attack” for me? I have made no attacks, just strongly asserted my personal experience in my field and ask that bad experiences not be extrapolated to unpaid internships as a whole. Sorry, I meant it in the “You’re going after the wrong thing” / “You’re barking up the wrong tree” way. Namely, I don’t think anybody has problems with a “If you’re a student, you get to follow around a scientist doing their work for a few weeks”. That’s an actual, useful service. The problem is with unpaid internships that are “jobs” - if that student ends up doing real work on their own, or like my friend who is a grown adult out of school being told “Yeah, sure, we have a job, there’s just no pay”. My internship during school involved be learning what goes on in a synthesize lab for half of it, and half of it doing a massive inventory and catalog of the lab’s huge chemical stockpile, that was completely unorganized. If it was offered to me unpaid, that, I feel, would be totally unacceptable - the second part is still work. In addition to Evil Captor’s link that shows unpaid internships aren’t really that useful to people (and remember, such things _cost_ people time and money) [here’s an article talking about people with degrees being asked to do unpaid work.](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mehroz-baig/unpaid-internships-for-gr_b_3908475.html) This system is basically just fucking over people who could barely afford college and are saddled with loans as-is. It needs to stop. ---
**Author:** ![Cognoscant](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/bbe5ce/32.png) [@Cognoscant](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cognoscant)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/90 "2013-10-29T16:13:00Z")
> [@bump](#): > > There is no way that will end well. It sounds like Dogbert runs your HR department too. The whole story is so riddled with stupidity that you don’t know whether to laugh or cry about it. The incident which caused the original harassment complaint happened in _early August_. This harasser had been reported for stuff before, but this incident was so egregious (not to mention witnessed by at least four people, two of whom I supervise and who reported it to me within minutes) that HR finally had to act, which they did by passing the buck to a Title IX rep and refusing to discuss the incident further. The Title IX rep then did some kind of investigation that took approximately a month, and still failed to interview at least two of the witnesses. In late September the Title IX rep decided…well we don’t know what the Title IX rep decided because he never disclosed the results of the investigation or even what actions were to be taken following the investigation. Needless to say rumormongering in the office was at an all time high. At some point the CEO got wind of the “problems” in the office and made a CEO-like decision: the rumormongering had to stop. This is what prompted the “leadership skills seminar” I mentioned earlier. Left unsaid of course was firstly how the CEO heard about the problems (although the harasser went on a business trip with the CEO right before word came down on high) and secondly what, exactly, we were not allowed to talk about. The only thing everybody knew was that since the harassment victim was a part-timer who worked 1 to 5, the harasser was not supposed to be in the office during those hours and was supposed to retreat to another part of the company. Harasser was still supervising victim, but through a grown-up version of Telephone orders were made and work was done. All was relatively cool for a while. This lasted, oh, two weeks or so. Then the harasser decided, well, they _needed_ to be in the office from 1 to 5 and it was _too_ much of a hardship to have to be away. It shows a lot about our department head that at first he did not know this was going on, and then when he was informed about it, decided it had been going on too long to do anything about it without going back to HR. Now HR has been sitting on this for close to a month. There haven’t been any confrontations between harasser and victim yet but the harasser loooooooves to walk back and forth past the victim’s office. So in a nutshell: HR is “still working on things”, the department head is “still deciding what to do”, the harasser is still going around taunting the victim, and there is a slight amount of tension in the office. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 4:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/91 "2013-10-29T16:14:02Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Well here’s some hard data and it doesn’t look good for you unpaid internship fans: > > [An NACE survey shows](http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/06/do-unpaid-internships-lead-to-jobs-not-for-college-students/276959/)that unpaid internships do not lead to jobs. Unpaid interns do not do any better than those who have had no internships at all in the job market, and worse than paid interns. > > Decidedly scammish! In fact, the survey found that: " Among students who found jobs, former unpaid interns were actually offered less money than those with no internship experience." > > I guess being an unpaid intern must mark you as a sucker, eh? As I’ve said, I wouldn’t be surprised it it was field specific. I’ve seen too many successful outcomes through unpaid internships (for class credit) in academic and other research labs to discount my experience. While I don’t doubt the integrity of the study, and it is sobering, I wonder what the outcome would be with a more fine-toothed analysis by industry. ---
**Author:** ![Karrius](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/71c47a/32.png) [@Karrius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Karrius)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 4:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/92 "2013-10-29T16:15:27Z")
> [@DarkDungeonDenizen](#): > > As I’ve said, I wouldn’t be surprised it it was field specific. I’ve seen too many successful outcomes through unpaid internships (for class credit) in academic and other research labs to discount my experience. I highly suspect that science fields, and fields that focus specifically on students, are “better” for unpaid internships, and tend to be a bit more practical. But if those fields end up better… how much worse are the others, to get those numbers? ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 4:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/93 "2013-10-29T16:25:32Z")
> [@Karrius](#): > > I highly suspect that science fields, and fields that focus specifically on students, are “better” for unpaid internships, and tend to be a bit more practical. But if those fields end up better… how much worse are the others, to get those numbers? I think they represent small numbers in such a study. Because the mentors have to work so closely side-by-side (literally overseeing each step initially) that they don’t take as many of these interns in such numbers. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 6:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/94 "2013-10-29T18:28:03Z")
> [@DarkDungeonDenizen](#): > > I think they represent small numbers in such a study. Because the mentors have to work so closely side-by-side (literally overseeing each step initially) that they don’t take as many of these interns in such numbers. Not unless you think almost 10,000 is a small number: > [@The Atlantic](#): > > This year, NACE queried more than 9,200 seniors from February through the end of April. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/95 "2013-10-29T19:07:34Z")
> [@Evil\_Captor](#): > > Not unless you think almost 10,000 is a small number: No, try again. I meant the number of students surveyed that are in lab science were a small number of the population surveyed. That was in response to **Karrius** suggesting that positive experiences that lab science students might have would demonstrate how bad it was for other students to get such a low average. I then said that could be true, unless lab science students are represented in the total population in small numbers (so wouldn’t be skewing the numbers). I’m trying to have a serious conversation- don’t try to play gotcha games. The impact of these experiences on the students I care about really does matter to me. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/96 "2013-10-29T19:46:08Z")
> [@DarkDungeonDenizen](#): > > No, try again. > > I’m trying to have a serious conversation- don’t try to play gotcha games. The impact of these experiences on the students I care about really does matter to me. Your meaning was obvious to anyone reading your post. That snipe at you was a textbook example of someone who isn’t reading what you wrote to understand, but just looking for any gotcha they can hit you with. ---
**Author:** ![CrazyCatLady](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/dfb087/32.png) [@CrazyCatLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CrazyCatLady)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 8:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/97 "2013-10-29T20:16:56Z")
> [@Washoe](#): > > :eek: What if there’s a fire? Happened to me every night when I was waiting tables at Cracker Barrel. As soon as the last customer left, the regular doors were chained and padlocked until all the drawers were counted out and reconciled and the bank deposit put together. You either left before the last customer, if you got cut early or they lingered for ages and you had your sidework finished, or else you finished while they were doing the money and then sat there twiddling your thumbs till they were bloody well through, usually half an hour or so. And you were expected to clock out while twiddling your thumbs, because that extra dollar or so a head was apparently just going to bust them the fuck up. The fire exits were left alone, but using one of them sent an alarm to the fire department and would have resulted in all kinds of fines. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 10:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/98 "2013-10-29T22:16:22Z")
> [@DarkDungeonDenizen](#): > > Different fields will be different. I don’t know what field you were in, but I promise it wasn’t about the quality of our students or the investment the mentors were making. > > Our students weren’t being asked to wash bottles or put away glassware or do other scut work. They worked side-by-side with researchers (who took a huge amount of time to work with them) applying techniques they learned in class. However, applying a technique you learned in a teaching lab to a research lab takes time, no matter how skilled you are. The students who were getting paid internships from my program tended to be doing longer internships. The students getting unpaid ones tended to be doing shorter ones to get exposure and some experience. Even still, they often get job offers because their didactic knowledge was high, they had enthusiasm for what they were doing and the researcher saw promise and potential. > > But they were not creating publication quality work or helping adding to the data in bringing a new drug to market. It was just not that sort of situation. No one else’s job was in jeopardy because they were there for a few weeks and no one was being exploited. They got class credit and real life experience for their effort and made a connection to industry professionals. At MIT nearly every undergraduate gets involved in research (unpaid) as a part of normal school activities, a program which was just beginning when I was there. But they don’t have to give up paid employment to do it. I’m in computer design. It is very possible to define a task of the right type for an intern to make good progress on over the summer, and then to pick an intern who is qualified to work on that task. The intern is not going to be there long enough to do anything publishable, for sure, but I’ve always arranged for mine to present their work to our VP so they have good visibility. My wife was involved in the drug approval process, and any company big enough to pay for this can afford the relatively trivial amount of money for an intern. I can maybe see not paying when a company is very small and poor, and the intern really gets to do great and relevant stuff. The cases which offend people are where the management is both making a mint and pleading poverty. And where the jobs are really grunt jobs which don’t teach anything. And I’m talking full time. If your program is part time during school, I don’t have a lot of objections. Ours is full time over the summer. ---
**Author:** ![IvoryTowerDenizen](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ivorytowerdenizen/32/17937_2.png) [@IvoryTowerDenizen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/IvoryTowerDenizen)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 10:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/99 "2013-10-29T22:48:31Z")
We were at a Community College with limited research opportunities. I worked hard to find my students research opportunities, on campus and off, to give them the same research opportunities that those of us at R1 institutions had as undergrads. I partnered with universities, state and private research institutions, small tech companies etc for every opportunity to put my students at the bench. If they had to be paid it never would have happened. Only the large industries paid. Anyway, I think I’ve explained my peace on this subject. ---
**Author:** ![Dr.Woo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7c8e57/32.png) [@Dr.Woo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dr.Woo)\ **Post date:** [October 29, 2013, 11:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252/100 "2013-10-29T23:17:26Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > Got a cite for this, given how common you think it is? In my experience, it’s how a lot of start ups work. They give - well, _promise_ you stock options, which may or may not be worth fuck-all in a year or ten. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-some-of-the-crulest-things-us-employers-can-do-to-employees-and-get-away-with-it/672252.md?page=6)