Employee has the last laugh when company doesn't deliver their final check after firing them

Employees get fired by the management for various reasons. It could be internal politics, toxic management, or the employee's fault, but at the end of the day, they are entitled to receive their final pay before leaving the company. A worker, u/collector-x, shared their story with the Reddit community where they revealed how wrongly they got fired. But on top of that, the company did not issue their final check on time and the employee ended up suing them. The results of the legal battle got the community debating in the comments.

The Reddit user recalled the incident from 8 years back when they used to work at a national craft store chain. They had to work under a regional manager in their department where they were informed that certain policies in the company were going to change after an inspection. "I told the regional manager this was a bad idea as it concerned customers' items that could be damaged and gave an example of this very situation that had occurred the previous week," read the post. The regional manager, who was a woman, disliked the idea of a subordinate questioning her instructions and a week later, they learned they were getting fired.

"I get pulled into the store manager's office along with the store assistant manager and corporate HR on speakerphone. I am informed that I am being let go for not following directions and pushing back on company policy. They have a paper for me to sign, listing out the discretion," the post continued. "I tried to explain my actions to them, explaining that compliance with the new policy, which I tried to explain to the RM as well, could open the company to lawsuits for damage to customer's personal items." But the dejected employee finally figured out that the regional manager was the one who forced the store manager to fire them for questioning her.

"I signed the papers and asked for my final check. Senior management told me it would be issued at the end of the month along with everyone else's. I point out that this is against state law and I want my check now. (~ $1200)," the post mentioned, adding how the store manager and HR refused to give the fired employee the final cheque at that time. The employee went home and consulted a wage attorney. The employee permitted the lawyer to initiate the lawsuit.

"In my state, if your final check is not given to you at the time of termination, then for every day it's late, the terminated employee is owed 8 hours of pay. My attorney tells me to have no contact with the company. Two weeks later, my attorney called me and said they had settled and the company would be sending him my final paycheck with 15 additional days of pay included. It was settled with gross pay, but they didn't want any tax liability issues, and so I agreed to withholdings so everything would be kosher on my W-2," the post explained.

In the end, the person got their cheque that included their full pay along with $3,000 for the payment delays. "My attorney's fees were close to $9,000 and the company's attorney fees were $7,000. My attorney explains that I am entitled to a statement because the fees are part of the settlement and have to be disclosed per state law," the post concluded. The company's refusal to give the employee their $1200 cheque ended up costing them $19,000 in total. The Reddit community flocked to the comments section to express their opinions on the whole issue.

u/series-hybrid remarked, "If an employee does something that costs the company $19K, the employee gets fired to be an example to the rest of the peasants. If a supervisor costs the company $19K, it's just part of the cost of doing business. The important thing is that they demand compliance. Yes sir, no sir." u/HalfSoul30 mentioned, "I always found it wild that attorney fees are so much more than what people are suing for. Glad that was on them though."