Since this appears to be a "bitching about work" thread, I have a little story for you guys.
I started this webdeveloper position about 11 months ago, with a small, privately-owned industrial company as a salaried employee.
Right before the holidays, one of the engineering/sales staff inquired to the owner about commissions he was owed for a bunch of major sales accounts he'd generated, dating back to over 3 years ago. The owner of the company took umbrage at this and the meeting quickly turned confrontational. 2 days later he was fired. One of my co-workers said to me, "It's always like this around here during the holidays. They're trying to cut their costs for the end of the year, so they fire anyone who they owe large commissions to. So much for the traditional holiday bonus.
The following week, on payday I discovered that my paycheck was short by over $200. I looked over the pay stub, and in the box marked "hours" it read 32 instead of 40. I went to the owner and told him that it appears there is an error on my check. He took the check stub and said he'd look into it.
Later that day, he called me into his office and told me that he had looked over his records and he discovered that I was actually 57 hours short of the time I'd been paid for! He added that "in [his] mind, this constitutes an abuse of [my] salaried status," so he was going to put me on hourly wage and make me punch a clock. In addition to that, I would have to either work overtime to make up the hours or I would be docked for 57 hours on my next paycheck!
I insisted that there had been some mistake, that I had kept close track of my hours and I know I that the reverse is true, that I have put in well over 45 hours per week since my hiring date. I reminded him that IT could easily check the server logs to see what times I was logged onto the network from my workstation. Furthermore, I had worked through my lunchtime on most days and had also put in many off-site hours working from home via VPN. All that time should more than make up for any vacation/sick days I had taken. He informed me that it was not his company's policy to pay me for time spent working outside the company building.
I went to the head of IT (who's a great guy and a good friend of mine) and told him about my sudden dispute with the owner. His reply: "See? What did I tell ya? It's always like this around the holidays. The year's ending and they're closing their books on the year. They want to hold on to as much of the year's money as they can, so they're putting the clamps on all of us. Every year I have to argue with them for days over paying me what they owe me for all the overtime I put in."
Well, after going over all the logs, it turned out I was right. I was not in fact behind in my hours at all. I was actually at least 8 hours over, even excluding all the hours I'd worked from my home on their project, without compensation. I guess this idiot doesn't know the meaning of the term "salaried employee." Anyway, I brought these figures to the boss's attention, and he told me that I had to be wrong about this, because he'd figured it out and he knew his math was correct. He said that after the holidays he'd call in the outside accountant who handles the payroll and we'd get this whole thing straightened out.
So instead of a bonus for the Christmas season in compensation for all my hard work this year, I basically got screwed out of about $200 pay, on my last check before Christmas.
After the first of the year, we sat down and had a meeting with the company's accountant. He was actually a decent fellow (unlike the owner, who's a total fucking snake). The payroll guy seems to me like the sort who lives by the numbers and takes pride in the fact that his figures always be correct. By his reckoning, not counting any sick days, I owed the company about 48 hours, or 6 days).
However at the time of this meeting, I had worked at the company for 11 months, and according to the employee handbook I am supposed to accrue sick days at the rate of one every 45 days throughout the year. Over 11 months, I accrued over 7 days in sick time, so that puts me ahead by at least one day (8 hours), just as I'd figured. The owner sleazed his way around this by saying that my first 3 months had been a "trial period," a period of time decided at the discretion of the owner, and over which time he was not required to offer me any sick/personal time.
I opened my copy of the employee handbook, turned to the paragraph on sick/personal time off and pointed out to him that nowhere in there did it say anything about having to wait 3 months before I start accruing sick time. He said "I don't very much like your tone right now, and in my opinion, your attitude is bordering on insubordination. I won't allow you to sit here and attack the ownership of this company!" I couldn't believe the nerve of this asshole. I was so pissed I was shaking, but I stayed calm and assured him that I wasn't attacking anybody, that it had been my integrity which was attacked in the first place with the accusation that I was swindling the company out of 57 hours of work time, a figure which had absolutely no basis in the math. Now I was merely trying to set the record straight and put this unpleasantness behind us. Now here he was changing the terms of my employment after the fact and trying to apply the changes retroactively!
Anyway, after all was said and done, he stated that I owed him about 8 hours' pay, which I can make up by putting in 30 minutes' overtime per day for 16 work days. Meanwhile, I'm now an hourly employee at the same wage as I had been making on salary, but now I also get time-and-a-half for overtime. So he's paying even more for the same amount of my services. What a douche!
Plus, I've decided that I'd really been working way too hard for this fucktard. I'm taking my sweet time now on every task I perform, and posting in forums, IRCing and making a few extra pennies here and there as a ChaCha guide from my workstation whenever he's out of the building. I've also resolved that I'm going to start working as much overtime as I can stand, just to cheese him off!
My advice: when looking for work, stay away from sole proprietors. Go with large corporations which have all their human resources rules clearly codified, and where you sign an explicit legal contract upon hiring. Small business owners can be real pricks to deal with sometimes.
