I just quit working for an extremely toxic (lowkey verbally abusive) boss. It was a long time coming. The longer I worked there, the worse I was treated, and the amount on my paychecks gradually dropped lower and lower. I had to get a second job to afford my bills (which boss got mad at me for, by the way…)
I was a waitress working part-time hours up to an average of 5 days a week. When I first started, pay was typical for what I expected from a PT waitressing position. I went from averaging a little over $200 each week to only a little over $100. Some of my checks did not even break past $100. I was only making a little under $1.5k/month, tips included.
I have some… questions about my paystubs. Heard a rumor that my boss shorts our checks. The math does seem like it lines up on the paystub though, so I don’t know if there’s something I’m missing or if one of the ex-employees just didn’t know how to read a paystub.
Was told I was making $10/hour minimum, with the rate getting bumped up to $15 on days we received little-to-no tips (I doubt they actually paid enough attention to that to uphold that promise). According to my paystubs, my pay rate is only $3.63/hour. I did see that was the rate when I first opened our payment portal back when I first started, and was told “oh goodness no, that’s incorrect, it’s 10-15/hour!” when I asked about it. So I can see now that the tips I was receiving was being factored into my hourly pay and the “makeup” tips are what we were paid to ensure we were at least getting the legal minimum per hour (other jobs I worked for didn’t change our hourly rate based on how much we got tipped, we still got paid our due wages and tips were our “bonus” money, so I don’t like that it’s how it was done here, but before this job I was unemployed for 3 months so I was desperate and willing to take anything).
The first three images are my most recent paystubs, and the last three are from back when I started working. Again, everything seems normal to me, but my boss’s contempt for us in addition to the rumor I heard makes me wonder if there’s any red flags in here that I’m not recognizing. I definitely wasn’t making enough money to live, that’s for sure.