Got two stories, from completely different jobs.
JOB #1:
This one doesn’t quite qualify, as I hadn’t been fired, but maintains the general spirit of the question. I was in my mid-twenties working for a high-end jewelry store in a dying mall in 1998–99. I had been hired on part time in the fall of ‘98, and as Christmas closed in, naturally I saw an increase in my hours. The owner of the store also owned a second, somewhat larger store across from the one I worked at that sold his second- and third-tier jewelry, plus collectibles like Lladro, Giuseppe Armani, Swarovski, and (ugh) Precious Moments, and I was bounced back and forth between the two stores, as needed.
We got paid every two weeks, and I happened to notice that for one pay period where I had put in 45 hours one week, and 35 the next (which the paystub clearly showed), I was cut a check for 80 regular hours. I went to my immediate supervisor whom I had a lukewarm relationship with, and she said to call the corporate office, since they were the ones who cut the checks. I did so, and the owner’s secretary told me she would pass the information on to the owner. A week goes by and I don’t hear anything, so I call corporate again asking what the holdup is. Again, I get the secretary, who has obviously been briefed to brush me off, and she tells me that they pay every two weeks, so it averages out. I counter this, citing, you know, federal overtime law that is printed on every required workplace poster in the country, including both of the stores in question, and her reply is, “well, that’s just how we do things!” chipper as you please.
My assistant manager, whom I got along great with and am still friends with to this day suggested that I call the Dept. of Labor (or whatever the hell the official title is, too lazy to look it up) and just make some anonymous inquiries about averaging overtime, writing down whom I spoke to, then calling back corporate and, innocently as I could, say something like, “well, I spoke with so-and-so at the Department of Labor and they said…” to try and put the fear of God into them at corporate.
I called the Dept. of Labor that evening, and you would have thought I had just called the Maytag repairman with a broken washer when I asked a question about an employer averaging overtime. Being fairly young and caught off guard by a government agency so willing to listen to a problem and help, I kind of let things get out of hand when the guy who answered the phone said, “you know someone who’s averaging overtime??? Who is it???”. I was also partially afraid that now that I had hinted at it, I would be in trouble for not disclosing everything he was asking me. I spilled the beans, gave them all the details and they assured me they would look into it and they would be in touch. Having no idea how these things work, I was pretty shocked to find out that either the next day or the one after, the feds showed up at the jerkoff owner’s corporate headquarters, which was also his flagship retail store, and pretty much crawled up his ass with a flashlight. They went through all of his payroll information for not just me, but everyone who had ever worked for him for however many years businesses were/are required to keep records, and it turns out I was the least of his worries. From what I was told, it is a violation of federal law each and every time a business owner does this, and he had been doing it a lot, so the fines really piled up. All of this just from a phone call! Satisfying, but a little scary at the same time. I hope they have better standards of proof now.
The crazy thing is, after telling both of my supervisors and calling the corporate office twice, no one could figure out it was me who blew the whistle! It turns out the owner had been in the habit of screwing people over for a very long time, and had a long list of disgruntled employees who were potential candidates.
As far as the payouts, it turns out this wasn’t the first time he had pulled this on me, just the first time I had noticed it, so I got a check for something like $85 and change. One of the very nice ladies I worked with at the junk store (what we called the lower end jewelry and collectibles place) who was in her 50s had been working for this asshole for around 8 years, and got a reimbursement check for a couple thousand, as I recall. She was pretty happy about that. To be honest, I was pretty flabbergasted that people like her and others who were decades older than me had let this go on for so long. I was a fairly disinterested, part time 25-year-old, they had been full-time employees for years, but it took me to come along and put an end to this douchebag’s fuckery. A couple months into 1999, my hours dried up (like I said, this was a dying mall and that Christmas was its last gasp), so I put in my notice and told my manager what I had done. My assistant manager and I tell this story every year to new people at his Christmas party.
JOB #2:
I was head of security at a large nightclub and the owners, an older couple with adult children who worked there that were constantly fighting with one another, sometimes physically (a whole other post in itself), were idiots who knew nothing about running a business. Since this place was in a seedy part of town, my team and I were kept busy breaking up brawls and keeping order. The pay sucked, but it was my first supervisory position, and you couldn’t beat the bragging rights.
Anyway, as the patronage started to dwindle due to the owners’ mismanagement, they were looking for a way to cut corners I guess, and they had their GM let me go for reasons he didn’t understand, just doing what he was told. I think the dumbass owners had also gotten it into their heads that I wasn’t an aggressive, or intimidating-looking enough bouncer (strange, since I was their very first non-family employee, and they promoted me to head of security in the first place) to lead my team, the irony of which will become clear near the end of the story.
In truth, having had the position for over a year and a team around me that knew their jobs, I didn’t have much to do in the way of command and control. I handed out the radios and flashlights, kept them inventoried, made sure all the guys’ hours were straight when I turned in my payroll, and it was all pretty routine by then.
I called Kelvin (not his real name), my second-in-command, the next day (he had actually watched me getting fired on the sidewalk from a distance while he walked to his car the night before but didn’t know it) and told him what had happened. Of course he asked why and I told him his guess was as good as mine. Since that night was a normal work night for us, he insisted on all of us (me, him, and the other three guys on the security team) meeting at a coworker’s house before work and he would rally the troops to my cause. I told him not to make a big a deal out of it, this was extra income for everybody and I wasn’t all that bothered by it (with these moron owners, I knew it was just a matter of time, since they fired perfectly good employees for stupid shit all the time). However, he insisted, so he gave me the address to meet at Tank’s house that night (yes, his real nickname was Tank, so you can imagine what he looked like). Kelvin must have called Tank to let him know we would be meeting at his house and a general idea of why, because I got a message on my answering machine later that day from him saying, “hey, Kelvin told me what happened. We ain’t gonna let ’em do you like that; we a team, bro!”.
Anyway, once everyone was at Tank’s house, Kelvin announced the reason he had called them all there by telling them, “OK guys, tonight we are all quitting”. Tank looked at him with a smile and said, “we are?”. Kelvin explained to everybody how the owners had treated me, that I had done nothing wrong, and we would give them a chance to atone for their error in judgement. Once again, but to everybody this time, I gave my “don’t lose a source of income just for me” speech, but by now these guys were not having it. “Aw, hell no, they ain’t gonna do you like that!” became their rallying cry now too, so we waited until it was time for us to normally leave for work, and off we went, me choking back tears of gratitude the whole way.
I should note here that I did not know a single one of these guys before they took this job, and I had no hand in hiring any of them. It is one hell of a feeling of validation, knowing that you earned your subordinates/coworkers’ respect and loyalty through the job that you do. What’s more, jobs like this that require watching one another’s backs in a dangerous environment create a bond that no office job can hope to match, so knowing that, in their eyes, I was worth quitting over was especially humbling.
When we got there, Kelvin went inside to grab the GM while the rest of us waited outside. When the two of them emerged, Kelvin told him, “look, I’ll get right to the point; we’re not here to make threats, but we think Phil is a good boss, and if he doesn’t work here, we don’t want to work here”. The GM’s reply was, “that’s fine” (what else was he going to say to five 250+lb. guys who handled violence for a living?), followed by “that’s just what I was told”, meaning he was just following the owners’ orders. At that we all lined up, and one at a time shook his hand, told him it was nice working with him (which was true, the GM really was a decent guy to work with and we all liked him), and, feeling just a little bad that he was going to have to run this 25,000 square foot nightclub in the hood with no security that night, walked across the street to the sports bar where the drinks were all on me.
About two years later, at a corporate security job, I got to talking to a coworker and found out he and his crew were the ones hired to replace us after the walkout. It isn’t clear how much time had passed between us walking out and him being hired on, but he said the owners told him that the last security team left on bad terms, so to look out for them if they try to come in and cause trouble. I laughed quite heartily at this since, not only did we leave amicably (not that they would know, since they were too cowardly to show up that night) none of us gave that place a second thought after leaving. That should tell you how self-important these assholes were.
Anyway, it was no surprise for me to hear they closed their doors for good about 4–5 months after we left. I used to drive by the place every morning on my way to work many years later and the building (the nightclub owners had only leased the bottom floor) had been converted into a private school. That is long gone, and there is now a chic, modern museum in its place. No exhibits to honor the epic wars we fought to hold that hallowed ground, I am told: