Conrad Is Unsure
Quite how long this Intro is going to be, and it might well take up the whole of the blog, as the original tale on 'Karma Stories' was just over an hour long, although with quite a bit of symapthy-padding. It was titled 'Nuclear Revenge - He Ruined My Paycheck, I Ruined His Life' and both assertions are true.
Edited to add yes, this tale of woe and revenge is the whole of today's blog. Art!
This is the Canuckistanian 401 Highway, officially the busiest motorway in North America, and our story is located in a 'gas' station as I believe they are called, located off the highway. The narrator, Ramen Resorter (because they were poor and barely managed to survive on their minimum wage), RARE hereafter, doesn't name the franchised station's name, but Conrad did a bit of digging and suspects it was a 'Petro-Canada'. They have 1,500 franchised stations across the nation. No, I couldn't locate this specific one as there are 12 all along the route. Art!
It was open 24/7 and was a franchise, which is to say that the manager had paid Petro-Canada for the right to operate the gas station under their corporate logo and signage.
Enter the villain of the piece: GREG, which stands for Generally Repulsive Execrable Git. GREG was a short, bald, petty tyrant who loved to exercise his right to be a total bottomhole to his staff. He hid in his back office, watching the staff on camera so he could burst out and dock their pay for 'time theft'.
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS 'TIME THEFT'!
It is crucial to know that he'd bought the franchise two years previously. Make a note of that.
Thanks to the layout of the station, pumps 7 - 12 were so far away licence plates could not be read, which led to greedy selfish motorised bottomholes filling up and driving off without paying. GREG, being an equally greedy, selfish bottomhole, would then dock the cashier responsible for that pump and in fact had this policy on a laminated sheet next to the tills, called 'Inattention tax'.
ONCE AGAIN THIS IS HIGHLY ILLEGAL WAGE THEFT!
Art!
Then a Dodge Ram fuels up and drives off without paying, to the value of $152, which GREG loudly announces to a packed station will come out of RARE's next paycheck. This would reduce them to eating ramen for two weeks and be unable to make rent, so they were verrrry aggrieved.
So aggrieved and upset, in fact, that they vented about this to a new customer, an elderly gent who listened to the story with an expression that got grimmer by the second.
He was, he explained, the owner of a gas station in nearby Sudbury. What GREG was doing to their wages was highly illegal and wage theft. The Ontario Employment Standards Act forbade any such deductions and if the Ministry of Labour got involved they would crucify GREG. Art!
RARE's imagination at work
RARE became a man with a mission. He pulled all the other staff, one at a time, into the cooler room, which was the only room without camera surveillance, he explained that GREG's deductions were highly illegal and would they get in on a set of claims to the Ministry of Labour?
All of them were up for it, especially Chloe, GREG's niece, whom he regularly docked for things that were nothing to do with her, counting on her not wanting to create family drama by exposing him for the little tin Hitler he was.
The eight of them held a meeting at a pizza parlour, having brought pay stubs for proof, and RARE submitted 8 wage theft claims to the MoL through their portal. Aware that the MoL would take months to deal with their claim, and then only get their stolen wages back, when he went home he dug up the e-mail addresses of Petro-Canada's Regional Director of Franchise Operations and the Vice President of Corporate Legal, put together a polite, factual account of what had been happening and included 32 pay stubs WITH GREG WRITING IN THE REASON FOR DEDUCTIONS AS BEING DUE TO DRIVE OFFS.
Art!
A pay stub
Initially, nothing happened and RARE wondered if the HQ didn't care what Greg had done. What they were actually doing was an investigation from their end, to see if what RARE had claimed was correct, because on the next Tuesday, when things were quiet, up turned three Ford Expeditions in black paint schema, and out stepped two middle-aged men in suits, backed up by five enormous individuals wearing tee-shirts with 'Corporate Loss Prevention' emblazoned upon them. Art!
Ford Expedition
They immediately went up to GREG's back room, knocked loudly on the door and, when he angrily opened it, his face went white with fear. The two suited men instantly laid into GREG, the Regional Director (Marcus Vance) informing the wretched individual that the station was being seized. He had made them liable for legal exposure, the MoL had gotten involved and they were looking at a potential class action lawsuit likely to hit six figures in costs and compensation. The other man, Corporate Legal, informed GREG that he had violated the Master Franchise Agreement with his illegal deductions, which meant his franchise was being terminated and Corporate were now taking over. This meant GREG had blown $250,000 with no compensation, which left him sobbing, so loudly he could be heard through the locked door. They took his master keys, safe codes and corporate access card, then he was escorted out of what was no longer his station, right past a grinning RARE. Which enabled GREG to put two and two together and realise who had utterly <insert swear here> him.
This was the end of RARE's Calvary. Art!
The 8 employees were paid their stolen wages along with hefty compensation to keep them away from the press.
HOWEVER - a word you surely knew was coming - this was just the beginning for GREG.
A month after being fired, Senior Investigator Agent Miller of the Ministry of Labour contacted RARE to confirm case details, also to say that the case was being closed since Petro-Canada had done all the right things. She further informed that for the two years GREG had held the franchise, he had taken all the staff's employment insurance, pension contributions and income tax deductions, and then used them for his own personal lifestyle.
ONCE AGAIN HIGHLY ILLEGAL!
The total stolen across 2 years came to $120,000*. Agent Miller passed the file over to the Criminal Investigation Division of the Canadian Revenue Agency, whom are the Canuckistanian equivalent of the IRS, and just as ruthless and focussed on getting back what they are owed. They went after GREG under an ordinance called 'Director's Liability' meaning he couldn't try to file for bankruptcy protection. Art!
The people you absolutely do not want on your behind
Chloe updated RARE about her uncle three months later. Her extended family had cut all ties with him. All his accounts had been frozen. His wife left him and went to stay with her sister in Toronto. He was forced by the bank to sell his house. Nobody would employ him as a manager so he had to get a job working overnight, stacking shelves in a warehouse. AND because he still owed $80,000 his wages were 50% garnished.
Conrad frowned at that total owed. He only got $40,000 for the sale of his house? Then I dug into the $120,000. The CRA charge 7% interest on fines, so that totalled an additional $16,800. They also charge 50% of the original sum owed if there is gross negligence involved, which is another $60,000. So GREG's total owed came to nearly $200,000.
Once more, Conrad did more digging. Minimum wage in Ontario is $17.60 per hour, meaning a 40-hour week for 4 weeks yields $2,816, of which GREG would only see $1,408 and it would take him four and a half years to pay off what he still owed.
Moral of the story: don't be GREGarious.
* We shall have more to say on this.
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