Shopping Mall Surveys
Many years ago (early 1980’s) I worked for a company that did what I called “Mall Mollying”, they did market research surveys in a mall and were always stopping people to ask questions, etc.
The company was run by three older women who had started it in their kitchen. They were opinionated, and had no care about anything but money. Part of this included paying employees not by the hour but by the survey. Which was against labor rules as it never matched the basic hourly wage. This is important…
Christmas came, and we were planning our employee party when one of the owners called and told us that in order to avoid paying bonuses, we were to fire everyone at the party and then hire back the ones that we liked after the new year.
We (the other managers and I) talked about it, and then I called the Federal Bureau of Labor, who had been trying to get the information for the employee pay for several years but had always been turned away. I had them come to the back door and let them into the file room, and showed them the boxes.
I then said I had things to do in the front and would be back later and went to the front desk to finish the paperwork I needed. Said paperwork? A blow up of Santa going down the chimney with “Merry F-ing Christmas” typed across it, all of the management resignations and the Fed-Ex envelope that would hold our keys and said paperwork.
Labor guy finished what he needed to do, we locked up, sent the package which was timed to arrive at their Christmas party, and walked away. The company ended up spending about $250k in reimbursements and fines for the labor problem.
Story credit: Reddit / mansker39