Alex offered my mom a “meeting in the middle” by paying her “standard pay” for half the time she worked. He goes out of his way to say “standard pay” as he knows that what is really owed her is “overtime pay” of time and a half. Not only is that owed on the disputed hours, but apparently it is owed on all the hours that were overtime, including those that were paid.   :-O

It seems that he gave her until the next day to respond. Unless you know that he didn’t even send out the actual offer until around 2:30 PM the next day after I asked him again for a record of the hours they had manually put into their time system for my mom. That’s just 2.5 hours before the deadline of his high pressure “offer.”

My mom didn’t actually get to see their “offer” until about 4:10 PM  (she wasn’t home when he finally sent it.)

In the final 50 minutes she was expected to come to grips with the company stealing her wages out from under her, not paying the legal wage and find a way to print, sign and fax the documents.  Yeah, O.K. After a month of trying to get through to them. I think Santa should treat a little old lady better than that.

When you see what he was trying to do however, you begin to understand why they waited to send the documents and what they hope to gain. By calling it a settlement she would be waiving her right to get paid for all the hours she worked and get paid the appropriate and legal overtime. Tricks people play on the defenseless.  :-O

Their “time keeping system” was Harry, mom’s manager who instructed her to let him track her hours and “trust” him to do so. He did this because their fingerprint “time system” wouldn’t train to my mother’s fingerprints.

She never had an opportunity to review what Harry was submitting. Even though this is part of the “policies” now being held against her. And she did as, on more than one occasion.

Other employees had problems with the system as well. It did not go smoothly for all 1400 employees and anyone who has worked with those low-end fingerprint scanners can tell you it isn’t likely that it could have. In the first days, there wasn’t even a scanner available and on multiple days the personal computer it was attached to wasn’t setup and/or made available to employees until after they had been at work for some time.

I have learned since through calls to me through this website, that Harry was part of the support team for their “time system.” It has also been shared with me that there were many problems with the time system. Harry should have been well aware of this as should Alex.  One former employee said it was quite humorous that he would use the idea of 1400 employee using the time system without problems as justification for not paying my mother. They knew the real story about the time system just like Alex did when he left this message.

In my mother’s case however, she was instructed by her manager not to use it and not to be concerned with the fact that she was not using it. Since it hadn’t been trained for her fingers successfully, she could NOT have used it at any time even if she had wanted to.

Somehow Harry (who often wasn’t even on-site) magically got her hours into the “system”. This was the accepted practice per her manager Harry and it was apparently upon this practice that they came up with hours they used to make deposits into my mother’s account.

Now, Alex wants to blame my mother and not pay her for her time for nearly a full week of work .... for not following  a policy that she had no choice in and for which it was physically impossible for her to do.

If she hadn’t brought this to their attention they would have been docking her almost two weeks (70 hours) for this. Of course these hours are actually all overtime hours. So, these would be time-and-a-half. That’t the equivalent of about 105 regular hours of work they were cheating her out of.

Notice in the letter below that they wanted her to sign, how he went out of his way to trick her into accepting a settlement calculated on “standard pay.” He is essentially asking her to take half the hours and 2/3 of the pay for those hours and all others that she was underpaid for. Very tricky Mr. Allen.  I can see why you were finally in a hurry to get things done. Also note that the due date and date it was written (very first line) are the same day.  :-O

The “offer” in perspective:

Total under paid:

Approx. $1,500

Hours under recorded:

Approx. 70

Offer:

Approx $300.00

About %20 of

what’s owed

What a deal!