Another post reminded me of this story, and I thought I’d share.

I work for a major grocery chain. For the most part they’re locked in on following labor laws properly, but every once in a while they don’t know what they’re talking about. Before this job, I had been GM of a high volume brewpub and before that I was GM of a 14 screen cinema, so I also know labor laws pretty well, as both my previous jobs were drowning in employee relations.

A while back we had a mandatory training for leadership about proper call-out procedures for our teams.

In the training our regional HR asked all the department managers, “What do you do if they text you?”

I said, “Ignore the text.”

HR said, “no, you need to tell them to call out on our call-out line. Let them know they need to leave their name, employee ID, and their shift.”

I said, “do I have to?”

HR: “Yes”

Me: “okay, but would you email us this information after the class?”

They did.

About three months later I had a new employee somehow get my phone number (which bothered me, but that’s another story) and text me that they couldn’t make it in the next day. I text back. “Call the call-out line. Leave your name, employee ID, and shift.”

The next day when I was at work I put in a timekeeper request for an hour of labor. This also happened on a Wednesday in a week where Wednesday was my only day off.

Where I live, if you work even a single minute off the clock, the company is obligated to pay you for that hour. In addition, because I was scheduled 6 days already, that counted as another day of work. So my entire Sunday shift was time and a half as it was seven days in a row during the full Mon-Sun work week.

About a week later I was called into HR to discuss what they claimed was me abusing the system and they wanted to write me up for it because that one text message resulted in $200 of extra money on my paycheck ($40/hr wage, so 8 hours at time and a half is $160 plus the $40 on Wednesday.)

I let them know they were the ones who told me to work on my time off and that of they wanted to punish me for it they could see me in court and they’d pay a hell of a lot more. I then reminded them of the email they sent telling us in detail what we were to do if an employee texted us to call out. I told them that I value my work life balance, and even a minute of work is still work, and I expect to be paid for each moment of work i do. They said, “okay, I’ll have to call the director of HR and discuss this. But we will get back to you.”

They never got back to me. But my paycheck was straight for the period and a week later they sent out a followup email telling leadership to let their teams know they weren’t to text the managers off the clock, and that if an issue arise they could call the store and the store could decide if it was important enough to contact us on our days off.

My time is my time, and I’m getting paid for it. Thankfully, for them at least, they never tried to retaliate over it. Sad for me as I wasn’t bluffing when I said I’m not afraid to talk to a lawyer… would’ve been a good payout.