They’ll Never Know
My current job is a fast-food franchise with five other stores in the market. I started out at one store making $11/hr. After my first year, I got a raise of 25 cents, and within a month I was promoted to trainer with another 25-cent raise. After about three months of that, I was late for work too many times so they decided to demote me.
I took a week off after that because I felt down, and when I got back I noticed they hadn’t docked my pay. I didn’t tell anyone and wanted to avoid attention, so I started working the night shift to earn an extra dollar an hour, so I was making $13/hr. After six months I had made the overnights one of the most productive shifts so the boss wanted to promote me to manager.
I agreed and they sent me off to another store for two months for training. When I got to that store, the amount I was making on my pay stub was $13 instead of $12 + $1 because the person in charge of payroll is lazy. So when the new store put me on night shifts they were paying me $13/hr + $1/hr. When my two months were up I got the raise bringing my total up to $15/hr on normal shifts.
But when I got back to my original store, the lazy payroll guy just totaled my wage again on my pay stub so that it was $15. After about three weeks of me being back, the other overnight manager started not liking me, so I demoted myself and asked to be moved stores for good. So they moved me to the slowest store in the market, without fixing the pay again, so when I got to the store I’m currently at I was making $15.
To finish off, I work overnights in my new store, so I get the $1 premium again on top of my $15. I also get free food, and the store is so quiet I get maybe 20 customers a night.