How A Molehill Becomes A Mountain

A few years ago, I took a role at a startup company as a secretary, working for a very nice woman. I was part-time, and we were closed on Fridays and the weekends. She had only been in business for a few months. She said she had been trying to run it all on her own. She got overwhelmed and decided to hire me.

She only went into the office on Fridays to do payroll, and my check would be in the bank on Mondays.

There were some things I didn’t know how to do, and I explained that to [Boss] in the interview. She said it was no problem and she would train me.

We got along great. We joked around and discussed our lives.

When I first got there, the office was a disaster, and my first task was getting everything organized. [Boss] trained me on some of the things I didn’t know how to do. I picked up on this quickly. She never complained about my performance.

Fast forward two months. Everything was going well, and we were still getting along. Christmas was approaching in about a month. [Boss] was suddenly different. She forgot to pay me for the previous week. I brought it to her attention, and she just said that she had a lot going on. Christmas was approaching, and she was stressed out about her family coming to visit. Understandable. She said that she’d do payroll on Friday, and I would get the check by Monday.

However, I didn’t get it. I mentioned it again. [Boss] said she had forgotten, and when she did payroll again, she would make sure I got it along with the hours I had worked that week. That didn’t happen. I politely mentioned it to her again, and she said it was the stress from Christmas. She said she would make sure I had it. She now owed me for two weeks plus whatever I had worked that week.

On Thursday, [Boss] said she’d made herself a note to do payroll Friday, and I would have my pay deposited by Monday. She also said she had other news. She said she was so stressed out about her family coming in that she was taking the whole week off for Christmas. She said I could do the same or work December 21 and 22 and be off until December 28 when she would reopen. I chose to work those two days.

[Boss] emailed me a list of tasks to work on for both days. I was only to work four hours each day and email her back what tasks I had completed and the hours I’d worked. I did so before I left for the day. She said not to call her or text her during the week at all unless it was something important.

When I returned on the 28th, [Boss] was upset with me. She claimed I didn’t come and work on those days because she didn’t get an email. I showed her from my computer where I had sent the email to her, and she checked hers, and they were there. She blamed the stress.

Then, she told me she had bad news for me. She had accepted another job working elsewhere, and she was laying me off. She said her business wasn’t doing so well, and she would probably close it down in a couple of months.

When people did call about doing business with her, she would get short with them and would curse them if they didn’t like what she was charging.

She advised me that the next day, Tuesday, would be my last day. On Tuesday, she thanked me for everything I had done for her and wished me luck in my job search. She said she would miss me. She added that she would do payroll on Friday as she always did, and I would get my check on Monday for the last two days I had worked.

I started looking for a new job, and I went ahead and filed for unemployment. I got a letter saying my unemployment had been approved because [Boss] never responded.

Then, I got another letter saying [Boss] was contesting it and a hearing was scheduled. I was confused as to why she was contesting it since she had laid me off.

For the hearing, I could upload any documents that may pertain to my case. I wasn’t sure what to upload, so I took a chance and uploaded the last paycheck for the two days I had worked the week she laid me off. I was concerned about the whole email confusion. When I sent those emails, I CC’d my own email address, just in case she needed to respond to me after work about something.

I was wondering if she was going to claim that I had never worked for her or something weird.

At the hearing, [Boss] claimed I was a terrible employee. The files that were a mess when I first started there were my fault, and I mailed things late. (I had everything ready to be mailed, but sometimes she took them late. She had told me she was the only one who would handle taking mail to the post office.)

Next, she claimed that my resume was all a lie — that I had never worked for any of the companies I listed on it. (She said she’d called them for a reference and that my supervisors, by name, spoke highly of me.)

Her next lie was that she had several other employees who worked for her at the business prior to me, and none of them required training. (She told me I was her very first employee there.)

The next lie: the week of Christmas, I didn’t work at all because I never emailed her to let her know I had.

The final lie: she said that she told me the last week I was there that she was laying me off, but I was to work all week. She claimed that, in good faith, she did the payroll on Tuesday and paid me for all week, and that I got my check on Wednesday. So, I robbed her of money.

When I told my side of the story, I challenged her lies. She kept changing her stories. I advised of some of the things I mentioned here. I told her that my last check stub was for two days, not all week like she claimed, and the check date was the following Monday, not the previous Wednesday. So, there was no money robbed from her. I also referenced the emails I had presented for evidence.

Then, [Boss] lied again and said she had never laid me off — that I had just quit showing up for work. At the beginning, she told the hearing officer that she had, in fact, laid me off because she was going to work somewhere else because the business was failing, and somehow, that was my fault.

I believe the hearing officer saw through her lies and concluded the call. [Boss] tried to keep the call going, saying I didn’t deserve unemployment.

Thirty minutes later, I got an email saying my unemployment had been approved. [Boss] didn’t try to appeal it, either.

A year later, I saw that [Boss] had been arrested for embezzling money from a company. (Probably the new one she went to work for.)

I did get all the pay she owed me.