'He's coming after my pay': Vindictive manager docks overworked employee's pay, employee leaves business in shambles

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    "I was just over it at this point"
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    Oh, the server crashed? That s XL OC For background, this is a small business in a miserable, ultra- ultra-r town, so no HR, no corporate small oversight, minimal governmental oversight, only 12 employees, but it's been around for almost 40 years and, until this started, my boss has been a genuinely awesome person. The manager and I have been here the longest,
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    him for 25 years and me for 17. I handle everything back end, tech, adverting, social media, and finances, while he handles everything front end, employees, customers, displays, etc. We have both been, for the last five years, on a salary because it cost less for the business and we were suitably well compensated. The owner of the business has been working on letting us take over more and more for the last few years so she can finally step away and enjoy her life a little.
  • 04
    The manager is not my biggest fan. I was a teenager when I started here and, for a few years during that time, he also dated my mom (yay for small town drama!)
  • 05
    Me being a teenager and him dating my mom at one of the worst points of my life (dad died, older brother died, illness, general teen angst, etc.), he saw me at my worst and... never got over it. He's very by the book, very old- fashioned, very big on Respect for Authority, while I am your typical disaffected ADHD millennial with issues with authority and no brain/mouth filter. Mind you, the man is a genius. I have an insane amount of respect for him as a professional despite this situation
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    and wanting to bhis head in sometimes. He could be earning 5x what he does at another job but he is loyal to our boss and for some reason likes this awful town, so here he is.
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    Now, the store has always skirted on the edge of profitable, in part because the boss chooses to prioritize paying her employees a livable wage but also because luck's just kind of funny like that.
  • 08
    Our previous bookkeeper did some and nearly let the stupid business run into the ground by not keeping an eye on spending, so when I took over I freaked out and had the boss put a stop to everything and started requiring that all big expenditures go through me and my newly created budget first. (why wasn't this a thing before?!) The manager has been nursing a pet theory that I did this so I can steal money without oversight (which, the boss? And the CPA? Are my oversight?)
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    and has become increasingly belligerent about how we have less and less money (we don't, we have a better profit margin than before but we also have more expenses than in the past and he's not allowed free reign with purchasing for the first time in forever, so obviously we have less money) and he sees me Buying Things! So I must be stealing! (We had a porch pirate problem at my house, so the boss allowed me to have any packages sent to the store instead for about six months.)
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    We pacified him by showing him expense reports, bank statements, etc. for a while, but, as smart as he is in his field, he has all the financial literacy of a high school student with their first job, so now he's demanding to personally oversee every. single. expense. and put an end to all digital payments because he does not understand the data in front of him. Everything must be paid by check and signed off by him and the boss, which...
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    does not work. I called customer service for our point of sale software in front of him and asked for a remit address for our subscription so I can pay by check and the agent actually laughed. It took five agents, a manager, and two accounts receivable agents to finally get an address and it came with a warning that paper checks will take extra time to process
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    because they never get them so it might cause issues. Our automatic ink replenishment system does not accept paper checks. I'm not even going to try asking social media sites or our webhost. He is interpreting all this as me trying to hide my tracks because "No reputable business will only deal in digital payments."
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    Now he's coming after my pay. He's convinced our boss that because I'm only on site 20 hours a week, (I live in another city an hour away so only come to work in person three days a week) I don't deserve my salary and should go back to hourly pay. She, like him, has absolutely no tech savvy and neither of them seem to understand how many calls from them I take every day or how often I work remotely on little things that keep the store running smoothly. (I am also an ADHD basket case and was neve
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    for our system many, many times because our server use to be held together with duct tape and prayers until I built us a new one but it never sticks. They can't even understand the difference between rebooting the computer and restarting the software. (No, really, they don't know how to reboot the computers anymore. I wish I was being hyperbolic.) They don't know how to scan
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    documents, email invoices, take digital payments, or even create gift cards. They can't even call tech support for our software because running the integrated remote help software is beyond them. It's three buttons. I cannot emphasize how completely technologically illiterate these two are and how much I have had to drag them kicking and screaming into the 21st century in order to keep this business growing. We wouldn't have tap to pay if I hadn't bullied them into it. I trusted the manager with
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    He was given strict instructions to not give it to anyone else and put it behind a password in the notes app I installed on his phone for him. I found the password TAPED TO ALL THE COMPUTERS three days later.
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    So, in short, I was just over it at this point. I agreed to letting them put me back on hourly and warned them that my work phone would not be on me 24/7 anymore so let's hope nothing crashes. I don't need the income, my husband makes more than enough to cover me for a few weeks and he's been begging me to quit since this whole debacle started, so I'm writing my first hourly paycheck today and it's half of what I usually get paid. There's also been a 6% drop in revenue since we stopped
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    doing social media ads and all website ordering from new customers has stopped, three late fees since the 1st over bills not getting paid on time because the checks I wrote did not get sent out on time because he did not sign off on them before I left for the day, a server crash that resulted in them having to do all transactions by hand for 6 hours, and I've gotten angry emails from nine different customers wanting to know why they didn't get payment links for their charge accounts at the first
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    One of the credit card terminals has been down for a week because the problem can only be fixed after hours and the manager does not want me working when no one else is here to oversee what I'm doing. My work phone has a minimum of 20 missed calls a day when I check in and the manager managed to break his printer trying to scan a document. It's been two weeks.
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    I'm interviewing for a new job at double the pay, better benefits, and better resources tomorrow with letters of recommendation from two former coworkers and the CPA. There's a folder of all vital passwords, documents, and information needed to keep the store running in my laptop bag that I will be handing to my boss the day I quit. Whether or not they can figure out how to use them is not my problem anymore. I stayed with this company out of loyalty to a boss who treated me well despite everyth
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    where good jobs are few and far between. I'm proud of the system I built and was continuing to improve and it guts me to know it's probably going to be destroyed in a few months, but I've been on call 14 hours a day, 7 days a week, for 15 years and I can't f wait to have a normal 9 to 5 for the first time in my life and never see this small town ever again.
  • 22
    FilmYak 3 hr. ago Please please pretty please with a heap of schadenfreude on top... update us when this all explodes in their faces?
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    RobZagnut2 3 hr. ago My favorite motto "I work to live, not live to work." It's too bad that many don't figure this out until they've spent years and years being loyal to a company that will never be loyal back. Congratulations on getting out.

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