Something is fishy here

[Racket_Man]

but I do not know how bad it is or even if I should be worried about it


a little bg
2 months ago the company I work for restructured the pay for the delivery drivers. we get one pay rate while on the road (sub-sub-minimum wage) and another pay rate while in the store (minimum wage). this also means that our POS generated time sheets went from 1 page to many pages.

a little over a year ago the company also went to manditory direct deposit with pay stubs ONLY being available on-line (for either viewing or printing) from the outside payroll processing company's website (not done in-house for quite awhile)

now ever since we started the all direct deposit and online paystub thing I have faithfully printed out my paystubs just to have a printed record. talking with other employees A LOT of them do NOT print out the stubs.

end bg

when I was printing my stub 2 weeks ago I noticed something missing and something new on the pay stub.

missing were any reference to my name, address, etc. abbr SS number, and tax information. this was the first "red flag" that caught my eye.

Next I noticed that where our hours and gross earings were detailed, it now shows our payrate next to each "job" catagory. OK nice to know but then again we drivers ALL make the same payrate now. what struck me as odd was the fact that the payrate contained 4 digits to the right of the decimal place. now owing to the fact that most payrates are expressed as $y.xx where y = dollars and xx = cents and most payrates do not go into thousands of a dollar ie. $y.xxzz

"Red Flag" number 2


now what concerns me is this:

the name address, etc. SS info bothers me becasue if someone needs to physically see say like my last 3 or 4 pay stubs I can NOT prove these stubs are mine. but there is a way I can go through my company and get that information passed down.

the payrate thing though has me a bit more concerned. and that concern revolves around the fact that my hourly payrate is a "bit variable". let me explain

on one paystub my payrates are
1. non driving 7.2480
2. driver inside 7.2503
3. driver road 5.2502
4. overtime 1 3.6241
5. overtime 2 3.6250

note: the overtime rate is sort of correct as they calculate the half time part of time and a half by multiplying my overtime by half of $7.25 which is $3.62

on another paystub my payrates are
1. non driving 7.2512
2. driver inside 7.2498
3. driver road 5.2499
4. overtime 3.6236

see the pattern.

now as a former computer programmer, systems analyist, designer,etc. this REALLY bothers me. this either show some salami slicing, poor systems design, sloppy programming, or something else. at one time I made my living actually doing this ie. programming system design and such. so this catches my attention

now you may ask what is a thousands of a cent in the grand sceme of things????? so what if the difference between the variable payrate and what I AM SUPPOSED to be paid is only one cent??? not much really but when my payrates become variable for no discrenable reason, big red flashing lights go off. I am not sure HOW they come up with these numbers when they are SUPPOSED to be 7.25, 7.25 and 5.25 even not some number with 4 decimal places.

the only thing I can think of is they are taking my gross pay per payrate and dividing it by the number of hours per payrate to get the displayed/printed payrate. and yes the numbers ie. gross wages bear out the "variable" payrate. but that does not make any sense programming wise. it SHOULD be number of hours per payrate multiplied by the number of hours worked in each payrate to obtain gross wages per payrate.

as a former programmer this BOTHERS the HECK outta me and makes me wonder what hte hell else is going on....

any opinions or advise????

[Solumina]

That seems really strange. Depending on your work environment you could just innocently ask your manager if he/she knows why they changed things. If you don't have a very friendly work environment or your manager has no idea then contact the Labor Board, they should be able to either let you know that it is something that your company is allowed to do and if it isn't then they are the ones you would need to report it to anyway.

[Seshat]

Go straight to the Labour Board, Tax Office, or some other oversight body.

Do not pass Go.

Do not.. er, if you can, do collect $200. :P

[Racket_Man]

Quoth Solumina

That seems really strange. Depending on your work environment you could just innocently ask your manager if he/she knows why they changed things. If you don't have a very friendly work environment or your manager has no idea then contact the Labor Board, they should be able to either let you know that it is something that your company is allowed to do and if it isn't then they are the ones you would need to report it to anyway.

the store manager just blew it off without a second thought not really even pretending to care and literally laughing off my concerns.

this is especially disturbing as technically my inside and non driving wage DOES fall below minimum.

from my previous conversations with our area guy conceerning other situations the conversation will be the same as the GMs, just a brush off. and going to our HR dept will most likely result in the same situation.

and yes I am serioiusly considering going to the state labor dept with this because they are screwing around with my pay, not much mind you, a couple of cents here and there but the discrepency IS there.

[teh_blumchenkinder]

as you've alluded, Racket... get all the pay stubs you can, get your coworkers, and head somewhere official... nowish. >_>
I smell rotten salami. Although, why it'd be on your fsking pay stubs??! Heh, no one ever said smarts were required to be a thief...

[Kristev]

At my place of employment, that also abolished true paystubs in favor of online ones. Printable only up to the most recent two. This is supposed to be more 'green' for the place, but it worries me, greatly. They even tried to get us all to sign up for one particular bank when they went direct deposit only.

[Seshat]

Quoth teh_blumchenkinder

Heh, no one ever said smarts were required to be a thief...

If I were going to be crooked, I would need a certainty of a haul sufficient to keep me comfortably well off for the rest of my life: and without it being noticed by law enforcement. If the tax office noticed, I would need it to be 'legal', and the haul would have to be an after-tax haul.

... hey, if I'm never going to be able to work again because of being 'crooked', I'll need that haul, right?


Since I've never come up with such a scam, I'm straight.

[PepperElf]

I'm also wondering.... without that identifying information on your pay stubs, how can you be sure you're really being paid the right amount?

What if they mix shit up? Give you say "joe shmo's" pay instead of yours. there's no way for you to prove it.

[Kristev]

You can't.

[Racket_Man]

Quoth PepperElf

I'm also wondering.... without that identifying information on your pay stubs, how can you be sure you're really being paid the right amount?

What if they mix shit up? Give you say "joe shmo's" pay instead of yours. there's no way for you to prove it.

and that IS part of the big red flag what went up when I first noticed it 2 pay days ago. now all of the previous stubs follow the SAME templant. so no matter how long ago I look ALL of the stubs are now the same.

and now with the POS system making soo many entries on a drivers "time sheet" it is VERY hard to sit down and add up all of those entries. as I said before my time sheet went from less than one page to 8 pages for a 2 week period.

I am trying to figure out a way to OCR the printed time sheets into a comma delimited text file and import that into a spreadsheet to check for accuracy. and yes I have several "ways" to cross-check the official timesheet. there are other reports that drivers can print that can access/provide the information.

I just do not trust them anymore because of all of the weird changes that have been going on lately