“Overtime law mandates that employers pay at least 1.5 times an employee's regular rate of pay for all hours worked in excess of 40 in any workweek.  There is almost no exception for hourly-paid employees.”

Interim update: There are some more updates I’ll try to post when I have time, but I wanted to get this article posted immediately. Here’s a newspaper article about more people getting the run-around from this company. Same lies and strong arm tactics like the reporter getting hung-up on. Same old...

http://nl.newsbank.com/nl-search/we/Archives?p_action=doc&p_docid=13452FCA70FABA10&p_docnum=1

This story and this site are a personal story about what I saw and heard during this time period and the experience I personally had in trying to get through to Sepia and help my mother get paid. There is certainly more to the story and I hope they will come forward with that side of the story. I for one would welcome an explanation. More importantly though, I hope they will just choose to pay my mother what is due to her. Before making any decisions about Sepia as a company you should search for other similar stories on the Internet and try to hear their side of this story as well. I’d be more than happy to post a link to any response they want  to make. Since  this site is being updated in real-time, some information may be out-of-date. Even when updates exist in one place, they may not have been posted in others.

In a nutshell:

“Sepia” / “Trend Concepts” hired my mother to shoot pictures of Santa for Christmas 2009. Sadly, they didn’t pay her fully for the time she worked nor did they intend to pay the over time required by law for the long days she worked.  :-O

They were shorting her by almost 70 hours and underpaying her by almost $1,500!

When she first tried to contact them to resolve this, they simply ignored her messages. Finally I started calling on her behalf.

http://www.mac.christianfarmer.com/Sepia/Overtime.html

http://www.mac.christianfarmer.com/Sepia/In_a_nutshell.html

http://www.mac.christianfarmer.com/Sepia/Santas_Workshop.html

http://www.mac.christianfarmer.com/Sepia/Tracking_Time.html

http://www.mac.christianfarmer.com/Sepia/An_empty_stocking.html

http://www.mac.christianfarmer.com/Sepia/Hello_Santa_Are_you_there.html

http://www.mac.christianfarmer.com/Sepia/Santas_%22Gift%22.html

http://www.mac.christianfarmer.com/Sepia/More_law_references.html

http://www.mac.christianfarmer.com/Sepia/More_law_references.html

http://www.mac.christianfarmer.com/Sepia/Photogrpahy_or_%22photo_stop%22.html

http://www.mac.christianfarmer.com/Sepia/1.html

http://www.mac.christianfarmer.com/Sepia/Show_Hope.html

(Click here to hear it for yourself)

The first return call (after 100+ attempts to get through) seemed to go well:

“Christian, Good afternoon, This is Harry Stafford. I'm the corporate regional manager over here at Sepia photos. I was also the direct supervisor over at Memorial City mall and I worked directly with Jacqueline, both before Christmas and and the Easter before that. I'm returning your phone call. I've been told that you've been calling the office and that no one has been able to assist you. So first of all let me apologize for the delay. Secondly, let me assure you that I've been with accounting and we've taken care of getting Jacqueline the money that she's owed so I'm gonna call and talk with her tonight about that. But if you need to sir you can call me back at the office at (936) 372-3111 extension 102. Again, my name is Harry Stafford and hopefully we can get all remedied so. Have a good day sir and talk to you soon if necessary. Bye.”

You would think that would be the end of it. Instead of receiving a call and my mother’s pay, we have gone through months of strong arm tactics and variations between ignoring her for extended periods of time and sudden responses from them that are irrational and come with insane deadlines.

Harry clearly worked with mom and understood she was in-fact owed the hours.

What we got instead was a week of headaches with them ignoring calls again and finally a call from Harry’s boss, Alex Alan. He offered to split the hours that Harry already acknowledged were owed to her. He completely ignored the overtime that was owed to her. He simply pretended at this point that it hadn’t been brought up. A former manager told me that she was instructed “You can schedule them [over time], but Sepia will not pay overtime.”

So, half the hours and none of her over time. That’s not just skipping the over time on the un-resolved hours, but on all the time she work! His offer of half the hours really represented about 1/5 of what she was owed ($312.00 vs. $1,449.41).

On top of this he asked her to write up a legal agreement and fax it to him within 24 hours. This after owing the money for over 2+ months at this point. The pressure here was unrealistic and the hurdles were obnoxious.

“Hi Jacqueline  Alex Alan with Sepia photos giving you a call back. It's about 3 minutes to 5 as I told you I would and try to resolve or get to the bottom of the hours. As we see currently, it looks like what's in discussion is the difference of 69 hours between your calculations and our time keeping system. While, I have some issues with the variances  between that I feel that there are some some issues on both sides. Our staff ... our management should have been a little better informing you as to what's required, but I also feel that part of the training that we gave as well as printed material and along side with the time keeping system we put in place. It was evident that our time keeping  system was the required apparatus for keeping track of our time and you weren’t able to do that. Yet, the rest of country did working 1,400 other employees were able to use it. You are required to take breaks and punch out for breaks no matter how much time you leave the set. So I feel that there's some mutual need on both of our ends to remedy, this so I'm going to meet you in the middle which is a split of your hours, which would be half of that 69.43.hours I would be willing to pay you at $9 an hour, which is your pay rate for standard pay which should be $312 and some cents. We would need to agree to that in writing and I need to know or hear you're back from you by 5 o'clock tomorrow evening as that offers is only good until 5 o'clock okay. O.K. You can reach me at (936) 372-3111 extension 101 and fax to me in writing that you're accepting that and agreeable to that. you can fax at (936) 372 3090. Again, it's (936) 372-3090. Thanks so much.”

Here’s the real zinger: All this was centered around the time tracking system. In short, it didn’t work. Their finger print based time tracking system was never able to scan my mother’s finger. Harry knows this because he was responsible for setting it up and he was the one who told her NOT to use the system since he could never get it to train on her fingers. I found out later that he was even part of the support team for the time system so he was very well aware of the problems a they had with it across the country as well as the specifics of the problems that he personally had at that location.

Mom knew that the system didn’t work and asked repeatedly about how they were tracking time. Having run her own business for several years, she knew to keep track of the time and did so.

I sent these records to Harry early in the process of trying to get through to them.

When they finally provided us with what the time system had (after four months of requests) it was clear that all the hours had been entered in as approximations. Apparently someone just guessed how much my mom worked each day based upon the schedule and some other general guides. It wasn’t a match to what she worked, but it was an approximation that was generally short by multiple hours each day.

The pattern seems clear though. The hours were approximations and inaccurate (short). Only one time entry (the first) isn’t a nice round number. The statistical likelihood of this over such a long period of time is very low. She seems to have been docked for breaks and lunch she wasn’t allowed to take. Another time, they simply missed the fact that she had worked an entire second shift when they were short handed. On that day she asked about her hours. She was told not to worry and that “Harry” would record her time properly. He didn’t.

The paper work we received shows where employees and managers are supposed to sign each time sheet. Of course, none of mom’s are signed by either. Another interesting thing about the time sheets is that they have a column for overtime, but the column has all zeros, even for week where their shorted hours went into overtime.

(Click Here to hear it for yourself)

How did hours get managed? Did 1,400 other employees actually use the problematic time system? One former manager told me this:

“I transcribed it [hours] from my daytimer on to, well first it was onto an e-mail but they didn’t like how I did it on the e-mail, so they had me do a spreadsheet an send it in.”

Apparently Alex, not all 1,400 employees used your system. What’s worse is that you had to know this from Harry who helped support the failing time system. And still you use that as justification to pay half the hours owed to my mom?

The same person told me:

“It was emphasized to me last Christmas ‘They simply don’t pay overtime’ ... but the bigger issue was getting paid at all because they were just so screwy about not having all... you know... your hours on your pay check or even getting a paycheck.“

So, where do things stand now?

Well, after months of trying to get things resolved, mom was sent a check marked “Final pay” for the amount of $230.94. It was identified as pay for “Contract” labor. She still hasn’t cashed that check.

The letter that came with the check said the pay was for the overtime that was owed her and shows they were finally acknowledging that they are required by law to pay overtime. The catch was that now, they wouldn’t acknowledge the hours they shorted her ... which, were mostly in the overtime category.  :-O

So, now instead of offering 1/5 of what was due to her, they offered her a different 1/6 of the money due to her.

They switched from “Yes, we shorted you hours and need to settle up with you” to “well, we’ll settle for half but no overtime” and then to “Well, we’ll pay over time on the original hours, but not pay for what you were shorted or the overtime on what you were shorted.”