hello guys, well i have a few paragraphs of what happened and then hopefully someone could chime in and let me know what you think would be a good course of action. keep in mind i dont have a lot of money (i'm 20) and unable to travel out of my area because of it. i was a grill cook at a restraunt in chico california. Logans Roadhouse. about 60-75 employees. owned by Joe Wong (restraunteer, burger kings etc. some of you may know him, he has a garage at thunderhill and a lot of nice cars, including a 360 challenge car) April 20, 2006 - Found apartment in huntington beach to rent, told manager i was going to quit around the end of may 2006 May 11th, 2006 - Give two weeks notice, manager forgot i was leaving, subisquently he gave me three 12 hours shifts on mothers day weekend because i was the strongest person on the grill and expo line and he felt like using me since i was leaving anyways. May 18th, 2006 - I ask my manager that i have my second to last pay check at the restraunt on my last day. paycheck for period of may 7th-may 21st. usual paydate would have been may 28th. May 20th, 2006 - My kitchen managers last day at the restraunt. May 21st, 2006 - Bar manager became kitchen manager, scheduled me for dates after the 25th of may, which was my two weeks. old kitchen manager failed to notify new manager of me leaving in a few days. schedule corrected easily and my last day was now scheduled the 22nd. end of pay period May 7th-May 21st. pay date on may 28th. May 22nd, 2006 - last day, only manager was the servers manager, he did not know where my paycheck was. he told me "i dont know what to tell you" begin new pay period. May 24, 2006 - already my budget is messed up and am out of money, drive 175 miles each direction to get money from my parents and pick up their truck so i can move my belongings and clean my house i was moving out of, i was the last roommate left and all cleaning left to me (driving to my parents was not in the schedule and didnt need the truck. spent day and $75 on gas) spoke with General Manager and he told me he would call the payroll department and get it situated. He calls back 30 minutes later and tells me they are overnighting them from Redding, CA. May 25th, 2006 - Go to pick up my paycheck, they only overnighted my LAST paycheck, which was for the pay period of May 22nd-June 5th. Amount $40. it only covered my last day working at the restruant. i needed and had told them i needed the paycheck that i should be recieving on the 28th...manager tells me it should be coming with the rest of the checks on the 28th (however they do normally come 2 days early and he would give it to me then.) May 26th, 2006 - went to pick up paycheck for payperiod of may 7th-may 21st. all paychecks for regular employees were there EXCEPT mine. at this point i was extremely pissed as i no longer had a house in chico. i was supposed to be driving to southern california the next day. my gas money was that pay check. had to stay in chico at my friends house for the two days till my parents could put some money in my account so i would have gas to get back to my parents house. May 28th, 2006 - Leave chico, drive to parents house and stay there. i was informed by my manager that they sent the check to my house in chico. i did not live there anymore and my change of adress would not have gone through by then as i had dont it just earlier that evening. i was going to have my friend check my mail and pick it up for me once per day in the evening. May 29th, 2006 - I call payroll and inform her of the mishap and try to have her just send one directly to my new address. she tells me she wont because they sent on out on the 25th of May in the amount of $375 to my OLD chico address. May 30th, 2006 - Move to Huntington Beach with $85 in my pocket that my parents gave me. no money in account and cc maxed out. June 2nd, 2006 - morning call payroll and left message telling her the paycheck had yet to show up at my old address. she didnt call me back. June 5th, 2006 - Got a hold of payroll (keep in mind it is just one lady working) she did not remember speaking to me the week before, i tried to explain to her which paycheck i needed, but she kept telling me i already cashed my last pay check. which isnt the one i needed. i needed the one before that. she gets my new address and tells me she would call me back after she got a hold of the general manager at logans in chico to get his story on it. at 4:30 i call her (about 6 hours after first conversation she said she would call me back) and she tells me she has it all squared away and she would have it in the mail ASAP to my new adress in Huntington Beach, CA. June 7th, 2006 - I have no money and get charged $50 for late rent and my mom has to run to stockton (60 miles) to deposit money in my account so i wont get evicted (cost to my mom about $30 for gas + the 4 hours she missed at work, so about $130-140) June 12th, 2006 - paycheck still not there. June 13th, 2006 paycheck still not there, at this point i am furious. my credit card is maxed ($1200+) i have a dollar in my savings and 25 cents in my checking. I have to drive 25 miles each way for work and for the past week i have been using just change, now i am out of change and out of any money to get to work. call payroll department and inform that i NEEDED the paycheck two weeks ago and that she is causeing me to have bad credit, and borrwing around 1K from my parents when i orignally told them i'd need about 300-400 from them to move down to socal. she then informs me that the paycheck JUST went out on the 12th of june! it took her a week and a friggin day to process the paperwork to write my check! she did not remember my situation and i had to tell her the story all over again. she sounded suprised as to why i would be calling her again. i asked her why i did not have priority since i had not worked there for 3 weeks and 1 day and i had yet to recieve my paycheck that i should have recieved at the latest on the 28th. she tells me "i could not do anything with your paycheck until i was done with the current payroll work i had to deal with" at this point i was furious because i was a good employee and i worked hard for only $8.50 an hour and i know i was underpaid, plus this lady is BS'ing me and she knows i'm only 20 and people on the phone always BS me because i sound like i'm 20. (past insurance claims reps etc etc.) so supposibly she sent it on monday (from redding which is a major USPS distrobution center, it would go straight to long beach, then from long beach to huntington beach) both my parents are USPS career employess and know this for a fact. it should have been here today, it was not. my plans if it does not come tomorrow (thursday) are to call my old general manager and inform him of the situation, as well as get Joe Wong's email address if my manager will give it to me, which i doubt. they fired a hostess when she gave out the corporate phone number (which was illegal to fire her for since she is allowed to give it out, they had other reasons like the one day she was 15 minutes late) my plans if it does not come friday, go to whereever i should go to deal with this, and if i do not have it by then i would like to take them to small claims (if i can) because: they have cost my mom 130-140 myself around 125 to 150, and the hit on my credit (i'm 20 and have had no problems with credit yet. i think this may be the first ding on it, but i am young and dont have much other than two years of rent on it.) my dad has always made me have a written budget with EVERYTHING included in and done to the dime. i am now liking to do that but if i owuld have had that paycheck it would have gone fine. i would have been around 100 over budget moving down here. but now i am about 500-600 over budget. DOH!!! sorry this is kinda a rant but i wanted to put the whole thing. has anyone ever had a problem like this? i'm sure some of you are business owners, what is your perspective? what do you think i can do about this? where should i go to do something about this? also, I have worked around Joe Wong and his crew at thunderhill and i would rather just talk to him about it rather than deal with politics etc. just in an email i would like to include my dates of events for him to read. i think he should know if the people taking care of his employees are doing a good job or not. considering he is an absentee entrepenour, (sp i know) lol if anyone could pm me his email if you have it or have found it online i would really appreciate it. i think my general manager will be very and i mean VERY hesitant to give it to me, he'll probalby tell me he isnt allowed to and will give me one that will be screened by a secretary. thanks for reading this rant/thread/post! any thoughts would be nice as now i'm all worked up again. not having ANY money is very very hard on me mentally and it's starting to affect me cause i'm always worrying about this paycheck etc etc
Have you checked on what the California law says about the situation? You should be able to find some information regarding you last check, etc. in the state statutes. Look up your state Department of Labor website. If you can find what they are legally obligated to do, get that in front of you and call the payroll lady again. I'd just say "According to California Statute # xxxxx that i'm reading here, it would appear that you have to have done (X) by (so and so date) or i'm entitled to (x). I would make small claims a last resort, as it will cost you to file, and if they don't just pay you if you win, it will cost you out of pocket to try and collect. Really, it's a huge pain in the ass. I'd just try and see what you can find in the laws and see if you can just remind them of those and maybe they'll finally take care of it.
Hmm, just kind of scanned your post there. If it doesn't arrive then tell them to cancel the check. Have another one issued. Go pick it up or have a friend Fed Ex it to you. Good luck.
I think you should take it all the way up to the supreme court! Wow you have really been screwed. I am sorry, but this is all petty baloney. 1st you quit. You demanded your last paycheck before the actual date that it was due to you. Here in Tejas you can pay people who quit in the next payroll. 2nd. Its not their fault you moved. Obviously someone there didn't want you going back there and said he quit just mail it. But Now its their fault, that's your credits bad, you owe your mom 1000 bucks, you have wasted countless hours on this. Maybe, just maybe, you should of saved more before your move. When I moved to Socal when I was 20, I had 50 bucks to my name. I didn't have a mom that would of bailed me out. You will get paid. Take this as a lesson. You are just like all the kids today. You want it your way.
I do tend to agree with the above post that it's not really their fault that you screwed yourself by not having enough to actually move and counting on getting a check early. My only support is in the fact that if they truely are screwing you around on getting you what your owed, you need to pursue that. But they owe you nothing more than a paycheck for what you worked.
I will keep my post short. I have to agree with John, although I would not be as blunt until I actually met you. Count this as a lesson and move on...btw you may want to pay that 1200 off as fast as you can cause interest kills ya. It'd be a different story if they told you to go f yourself, but it seems that they are trying to get your check to you.
I work at logans, and they drag there asses in such situitions. IDK about that store but it sounds as though your not corporate so I dont know if you call home office in nashville or just the owner of said store. You should never expect to get a paycheck early we get them monday morning by fed ex and by no means are allowed to get them before 4PM but thats a corporate rule. Best advice is wait for the check and move on.
we are not run under the same corporate office as you. the west coast logans are all managed by JA food enterprises or something like that. payroll for this is in redding. thanks for the replys guys...i got my check today. dated the 13th...which was the day i last called her so i geuss she didnt put it in the mail when she said she did...again... i didnt have a choice on when to move, if i stayed in chico with my job i would have to sign another rental agreement for at least 6 months. on top of that the people i was moving down there with had jobs lined up for a mid may start so on may 15th i was already paying rent in socal. i had a job lined up down here so i have a steady income now...just getting first paycheck tomorrow of about 1600 about double my largest paycheck i've ever gotten for a two week payperiod..so from here on out...clear sailing. oh ya and we always have the opportunity to get them early. normally we are supposed to get them at 3pm on monday but they let us have them on saturday night if u work closing shift (1am on sunday u get check). they are pretty relaxed about it. i trusted my manager to have my check there on my last day or the days directly preceding it. however it did not show up on my last day, the days directly preceding it...and since i was supposed to get it on the 28th anyways with everyone elses paychecks, it was not even in that group. cause i had waited till the group of paychecks came in for the whole restraunt and mine was not there.
Your managers are ****ing up big time if they're giving you your checks early. There probably isn't any money in the payroll account until noon or 3pm on Monday, so they're almost certainly breaking the company policy, maybe in danger of writing bad checks? just a thought.
sorry about the quick tangent, but: why do companies pay the payroll out of a special payroll account and not just out of the general account? does it just make things easier come taxtime? Or to keep things clearly transparent for auditors? Something else entirely?
One reason (I'm sure there are many reasons) is that the checks are often printed offsite (maybe in another state) and are overnighted the day before payday... the account isn't funded until the time that the company policy dictates as "pay day" as a layer of protection against theft/fraud, in case the checks are lost or stolen in transit.
well in this case our payday is every other monday. so if we get it saturday night and get off work at 1am on sunday...even if we put it in the ATM by then it will not have gone through the bank and processed by 3pm on monday. especailly since we are not in the same city as payroll. they also do not give them out to everyone. just the few people that do work hard, not everyone get's their's early. there was about 5 of us that would be able to get them on sunday
In my company we issued checks on Monday too. And there was zip in the acct till about 0001 on that day for the already listed reasons. As for asking for a check early, I would laugh in your face. We would never do it for fear of setting a president for other requests. As for loosing the check, you should ask the company to cancel it and send you a new one. Thats about the best you can do and the other options would cost you more to bring about than the check is worth.
I think its a bit much to expect the check to be there on the last day. If payroll is from a central area the manager does not have the authority to make an agreement like that and if he did, thats his fault. In my company, I transfer money into the payroll account the day that payroll checks are cut, for various reasons. One of those reasons is I get a report sent to me detailing exactly the amount payroll will be, and I deposit that. Its easier to seperate those transactions out rather than show them all in my main account. Regarding the situation, I deal with people very often who 'enhance' the severity of a problem because they do things that make the problem worse, and then when they call me about it, suddenly the little problem is huge and they expect me to take the fall for it. By law they are required to pay you for hours worked. I believe they generally must do that within 1-2 pay periods. They are not required to overnight your check, and mailing it to your address of record is perfectly acceptable. If a paycheck was lost, I would never cut another immediately until I talk to the bank and cancel the original, ensure it was not cashed, and then re-issue (possibly in the next payroll). The lesson you should learn from all this is not to put all your eggs in one basket and don't project your problems onto someone else.
One thing a person absolutely positively MUST do is shuffle SOME money into an account they can't too easily get to, that means no ATM card. Automatic payroll deduction is best, and even if the amount is only $20 a paycheck, you won't miss it, and it adds up, and is there when you 'really' need it. In our house, I pay all of the bills, and 75% of whatever is left over goes into savings. If I really need to, I can pull some out of savings to pay an unexpected bill, but so far, in 13 years I have not had to. $10, $20, $40, $75, $250 or whatever, save SOMETHING every single paycheck. Change from going to Burger King or Taco Bell from 5 times a week to 2, and save that.
