Should I try to get compensation from this waxing company that fired me after a week?(that now refuses to pay me)
Hi everyone!
If you have the time to stop and read my story, I would so greatly appreciate any advice I can get because I'm so lost and stressed about this whole situation and im desperate to know what I should do.
I figured insite from other Aestheticians could be good, especially to see if anyone of yall have experienced anything like this before.
I dont know if its a bad enough situation to be worth pursuing.
When I told my Mother in law about this situation, she immediately said I should file a complaint with the BBB (better business bureau), but id like to get some advice and see if anyone knows if anything could maybe come from this.
This will be a bit of a longer post because I feel like I need to share the context and everything that happened during that week first, but if you're more interested in my legal concerns, you can skip the context. (I've bolded where that starts so you can hopefully find it easier)
First the background:
Just over a month ago, I was hired for my first job in the field I went to school for (beauty and wellness industry, it was a waxing job), and I was so excited because it can be a very hard field to break in to. 2 weeks later I started my training. The training for this job was very brutal (worked from 7:45 AM-5 or 6 PM for only $15 an hour). There was a lot of physical labor involved in it.
The company gave us a list of more than 40 services that they wanted us to pass off as soon as possible. They said we didnt have to have all of them passed off by the end of the week, but to get as many as we could. They also made it very clear that there would be another week coming up where we would be able to spend the whole week passing off more service.
Half of the services we had to pass off were using products I had never used before in my life (sugar wax) and had no idea how. They trained us to use it for a couple hours on the first day, but warned us that it would be very difficult until we got used to it.
But again, I wasn't too worried because I had been sent a lot of information on the training week, and everything I saw mentioned that you just had to have all services passed off my the end of the 3 month probationary period and I was confident i could be 100% passed off in that time.
Another important thing to not is that the whole training week was an absolute mess. We had different trainers come in every day to work with us, which was really hard because they were all contradicting each other on the protocols. We would have one person saying we were doing it correctly, and the next day there would be a new person that told us we were doing it wrong. This made it hard to learn, and to pass off services because whether or not we were doing it right was all subject to who was watching us perform the service.
All of the trainers were also very overwhelmed because the size of my training group was double to triple the size of the normal training group (we were a group of 10 people, normal size was typically 3-5
In the week I was there, I only had the chance to perform 6 services (the most time consuming ones like leg waxes, and mostly focusing on sugar wax). With the size of our training group, the ammount of services was more limited because model clients were more spread out between more people, so the services i was able to perform were subjective to what I was assigned to, and what services those people wanted. We could also perform services on each other, but again, once the hair is gone, its not gonna grow back in the next few days so it still limited the services we could do.
We started taking clients on Tuesday and I did a leg waxes, which didnt go great because it was my first sugar wax ever, Wednesday I proceeded to struggle and had an emotional breakdown on my way home because I was the only person who hadn't passed off a service at that point (most other girls had 2-5 done). I cried into my husband's chest for about an hour with feelings of exhaustion from long hours, ans feeling like a failure. Thursday, I passed off my first services and was able to pass off 3 in that one day because I was making such good progress and I was really getting used to the sugar wax and I was so happy! One of the services I passed off on the first try that day was literally the service that the company specializes in, which they said nobody ever passes it off on the first try but I did so I was feeling really good, and I was really enjoying it!
The next morning one of the trainers was like hey can I talk to you and I was like yes and she said that when the manager came to visit, she had just mentioned to the previous trainers how I had very good technique and was very thorough, and that I just needed to speed up because that was the one and only reason I was failing services was just going over the time limit. I told her yes I would try my best. I also explained to her that whenever trainers gave me my evaluation after services, I would list every snag I knew I hit that kept me from finishing in time, and they agreed that they were confident that I would be able to finish in time the next time I attempted the services, BUT that I had yet to have a chance to re-attempt any services and prove myself, and show that I would be able to take what I learned.(important to note that every part of the body is so different in the way you will apply wax, so the same thing that slowed me down in a leg waxes if totally different than was slowed me down in an arm wax) She said it sounded like I was learning a lot and that she believed in me. I also had 3 of my own clients coming in that day.
I did my first service in the morning on a girl I knew from high school that was nice enough to come in so I could practice on her, and I went about 15 minutes over the time (in all fairness I was never told the time limit for that service but I was trying my best to be as fast as possible) I got ready for my next 2 services after that was done, and when I went up for lunch before my clients came, they pulled me aside and fired me! I was really blindsided because I had improved so much which was acknowledged by trainers, and I had no indication at this point that my job was on the line after 4 and a half freaking days there (only 3 of which we had time to do services)
I was really pissed of and stressed about it because now my husband and I are down to 1 part time income (he's making a little less than $2,000 a month as he has also really struggled with finding employment, and his company want back on promises of promotions for him) I was stressed, but i figured my paycheck from this week I had worked would at least hold me over until I found a new job (would have been about $600).
I talked to my dad about it also, and he thinks that I may have been the victim of a hire to fire situation (important info), which if you dont know is basically when companies hire too many people with the expectation of firing a certain amount and keep the people they want the most.
\*\*Now here's where the Pay situation comes in if that's what you're here for:\*\*
After about 2 weeks, I still had not received my paycheck even though the pay date had already passed and I was getting really worried because I desperately needed that money. I decided to go back into the 80 page employee handbook they made me sign and scan for literally anything that could indicate why I hadn't been paid(admittedly, i gave up on reading it after about 10 pages because that alone took me about an hour to get through the tiny writing so i just signed it and moved on) That's when I found Page 27 and my heart sank a bit. It said:
"In exchange for this investment \\\[in training you\\\], (company name) requires an employee commitment of 4 months starting on the employee's first day of training or a repayment for training in the amount of $1000 in the event the employee leaves of their own volition or in the event they are terminated \*\*with cause\*\*. For each month the employee is employed, the repayment reduces by $250 until it reaches the amount of $0 at 4 months of employment."
When I sent it to my husband, he sent it to his mom for advice (shes very passionate about finances and he was pissed that way may not get paid/may now owe them money)
She was absolutely livid and immediately filed a complaint the BBB. She felt that this was a potential situation of exploitation on the company's part, and in a quick search, she found stuff about how if a company has anything like this in their conditions it should be displayed very clearly (like on one of the first pages of a contract, not on the freaking 27th page), and should also be stated multiple times (on othee documents/verbally during training and that kind of thing) it was stated once. Right there on page 27, nowhere else (belive me i checked), and was never again mentioned.
\\\*I also want to add that they would not allow you to begin training until the handbook was signed so its not like I could have not signed it even if I did find the sketchy bits and still have a job\\\*
Here's the other thing too; this page also said that they had the right to pursue legal action to get their money from employees. It dawned in me that if it was a situation where the company will over hire employees in order to fire them, than they could literally be doing that so that they then have a right to collect butt tons of money from people the never intended to keep employed (this is speculation, but if its true than its majorly screwed up)
But regardless of that my question is where they were getting that they spent $1000 on me in that 1 week of training. All of the product I used (which really wasn't much) is pretty dang affordable as someone who has purchased wax for home use. They didnt provide any sort of uniforms or anything like that either. I think I spent more money buying a uniform for the job than I would have used in products lol (scrubs can be pricey, and I needed a few other things as well so I spent roughly $200 on making sure i was ready for training) a part of me is wondering if they would claim that its also to pay trainers (literally not my responsibility to pay for your employees)
I was also fired without any warning or indication after my progress was praised by trainers, and I never broke any rules or did anything against company policy, so is that really being fired 'with cause' as they stated? Im young (early 20s) and I've never experienced anything like this before so I dont know what is ethical or not.
Furthermore, I remembered that I had it in writing on a different 2 page document they had me sign that stated I would be paid for training, and I realized that I never actually signed anything that said I wouldn't be paid if I was fired before completing training. Not even page 27 specified that.
I decided to email HR about not being paid in the event that the Attorney General agreed thar I should be paid because I wanted to have them refusing to pay me in writing. HR emailed me back and claimed that they had a right to pursue legal action from me to get the \*\*$1,400\*\* I would owe them (im sorry what's with the change in the number all of a sudden?!), but that they wouldn't demand it from me as a courtesy to me, but that they would be keeping my paycheck as compensation for themselves)
At this point, I am not sure if me pursuing the complaint with the BBB will end in me being paid at all, but after getting the email from HR where she claimed I would owe them $1400 as opposed to the $1000 stated in the handbook, it has me worried that employees who have been pursued for repayment may have been exploited for more money than even the contract states.
I dont know reddit. Please help me and give me guidence. I dont know much about the laws in the US about this kind of thing, or if me pursuing the complaint will be worth it. Even if its a potential for me to get any kind of justice for any past or future employees that they have shaken down for money, that would be enough of a win for me because I cant shake the feeling that something gross and unethical is going on here. TYIA for any advice you can give 🙏🏻
Also if you need to know more information, I'll be happy to provide it.