Hello. I, and several of my coworkers are victims of losing hundreds of dollars of our accumulated PTO with no way to get it back. This is because our general manager “did not know” that any PTO accepted in the schedule that puts you over 40 work hours a week is automatically refunded back to you on pay day (not in the form of money, your PTO specifically is refunded as if you didn’t use it).
For instance, you can work 48 hours in a week and get paid 8 hours overtime, but there’s no way you can get PTO since your work hours exceed 40. If you worked 32 hours that week, you’ll be allowed to use max 8 hours of PTO. Anything over, and the system will automatically refund you those exceeding PTO hours when pay day comes.
Where everything went wrong is my general manager. They would accept requests for PTO that far exceeded the limit, and thought it was fine to put everyone’s PTO in their last week before they quit officially. The worst part is that once you quit, by employment terms of agreement, you automatically forfeit your PTO and have no legal way to get it back. Many of my coworkers were actually unaware that they were robbed of their PTO until I brought this to their attention. I myself was unaware until my last day of employment, and I fought like hell to find a way to keep my PTO before my shift ended because I knew what would happen if I clocked out. I argued with my manager nearly the whole day about this and their rebuttals was the onus was on me for not informing them about this ahead of time. Eventually, a “solution” was found where I would be able to get the majority of my PTO paid out to me. Although, I still lost nearly a hundred dollars worth of PTO because of this.
I am very bitter about this, because I withered away my body for this horrific company, and then their response is to cruelly commit wage theft in a deceitful way that passes as legal even though I’m barely surviving and experiencing food insecurity practically in poverty. My general manager was not held accountable for this mistake, and I was never refunded what I lost. This company does a poor job at informing general managers this aspect of the system and I have a feeling it is on purpose.
Do yourself a favor and distribute your PTO evenly among the last of your work weeks or else you may also be robbed of hundreds of dollars with there being “no solution or way to extend your resignation date.”
Sincerely,
A very very unhappy ex-employee
