Urban Outfitters parent company asks employees to work for free

[laundry_queen]

57. It wasn't the first time

I did have severe frostbite at least once before that so my feet were already very sensitive to it, so I couldn't tell if my cold sensitivity in my feet was due to that instance or still from the time before. It was probably the time before that (it was so bad my feet were too swollen to wear my normal shoes - that time was solely my fault as a dumb 14 year old too cool to wear boots) and that more severe instance may have had something to do with me be susceptible to it at the derby I guess.

Then I had babies and my circulation changed and now my feet are always too warm, LOL. So everything is fine now.

Also, at the derby I really didn't have proper boots. It's not like I was paid enough to afford good boots either (Back then you couldn't get good ones unless you wanted to fork out quite a bit).

Oh, and it was a sexist workplace. The guys started at $0.50 more an hour than I did because they had a different title (that's how they got around the labor laws here at the time) even though our jobs were very close to the same description. And then one time I was hurt at home, stepped on a nail and my foot became infected so I couldn't stand up for 8.5 hours a day. My manager gave me a stool to sit on instead of standing. The owner of the business didn't like me doing cashier work sitting on a stool, so sent me home without pay for 2 weeks until my doctor okay'd me being on my feet. Apparently sitting on a stool (which, by the way, in no way affected my ability to do my job) "looked lazy".

They also used to make me close without getting paid. My pay stopped when the store's doors closed, but I was expected to clean up and count my cash and balance the tills on my own time. I kept track of all the times I did that - dates, times, circumstances - so when I got laid off I gave them my little sheet with all of the extra time I worked and told them I had called the labor board (I actually had, that's what gave me the courage to hand my timesheet in). I received ALL of my back pay on my last check.

Anyway, that got long. But yes, companies find ALL kinds of ways to screw workers out of their time. I could list a dozen right now off the top of my head from places I've worked.