It's a familiar story. College got too expensive to live without working, but even living seems too expensive without working the right kind of job these days. Upon relocating to a new state, under the guise of allowing my senior staffer career to implode gracefully, I scrounged around and found employment as a gas jockey for a regional oil company. In my short life time I've worked about a dozen or so jobs with varying degrees of ethical integrity from my employers. Even working at $2.13/hr for a 5 star restaurant in New Orleans, the pop would be free on your shift. Not at this company. I was hired with the promise of 40/hrs a week - which I could make work for the interim, but barely - in actuality it was more 18...24...32 which shouldn't mean the difference between keeping food in your refrigerator, but it does. My actual start date was two weeks from when it was originally discussed - I had rescinded my only other (part time) job offer during that time. The situation was not ideal - I was starting in a deep hole, and sinking. So, I did what any motivated, resourceful, college educated, hungry individual could see the logic in - I ate primarily the food being thrown away, the Halloween candy settling under the Christmas offerings, the donuts too stale to sell. I knew the company's policy was strict - and I assumed I would lose my job if anyone made issue of it, but frankly, the input was becoming too much more than the output in regards to that job - I could live with that. I had done the "management, executive" thing not one year ago - I see the bottom line. So when an oil company that pays minimum wage, employs Waltonian tactics to keep employees below full time, denies breaks of any kind, and refuses overtime pay for a 16 hour day I just don't see how $100 (over the course of a month and a half) of full-price-valued, over-priced, roller grill food that is on its way to the garbage is worth CRIMINAL CHARGES?!
How can I move this to civil court? Would a prosecutor be enthused to prosecute this case or can I just write a check and call it a day? Do I need an attorney for the pre-trial hearing where I enter a plea?
Why is it legal for them to charge employees for expired food? If it's not good enough for customer consumption, why am I being charged as a customer? If I'm willing to let my stomach pay the toll every time this gamble goes south, why can they charge me like they aren't selling me bad food?
In MO the overtime law is very explicit - since 1867, it's an 8 hour work day. This company pretends overtime is over 40 hours in a week - even if 16 or 24 of those hours are in one day. Can I use this to my advantage? I see your 'theft' tab, raise you 'unpaid overtime' - and we all go home.
I have every interest in erasing this from my non-existent criminal record. I don't want to look back, 30 years from now when I'm 50 and this be my only infraction - being broke, and working for an oil company.
Maybe I'm just the big city gal walking into a wasp nest - but when a biracial woman living below the poverty in Central MO can hear and see her arresting officers are having...reservations? about arresting me for this - I think there's something here. I watch my coworkers, hard working college students and mothers pay full price for expired food with MO EBT (Food Stamps), in a franchise where gun point robberies seem to be a weekly event this Holiday season and I think this is the picture of 2014 - and there's something wrong with that. I've heard a lot of conversations, close to the resident DA, that were effectually, "Don't be a dick - you can't actually do that." The grandma shoving a loaf of bread in her purse doesn't actually serve time - she's added to the list of wellness checks. I may know legislation, but I've prided myself on being able to avoid criminal law - until now.
Submitted December 24, 2014 at 05:45PM by valduck18 http://ift.tt/1wkg4co legaladvice
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