Employee resorts to legal action after boss lies to them and leaves them stranded in severe snowstorm

Imagine being assured by someone that they would help you out when you are in need, only to abandon you at the last moment. This is exactly what u/Plunky-juju faced when their boss lied that he would drive them home safely during a snowstorm but instead left them stranded in the middle of it. The individual revealed at the beginning of their elaborate Reddit post that within 30 minutes of clocking in, it started snowing lightly and their boss assured them that he would return from his hour-long break to close the shop and drive them home before the snowstorm got worse.

"I made the mistake of assuming he was telling the truth. I've been here at the store waiting, power flickering as the snow gets worse, my cell coverage diminishing and looking at other stores and folk, in general, getting the heck out of here as now the forecast is calling for increasing intensity. But my boss never came back," the employee wrote. The boss picked up the call for the first time and said he would call the employee back, but then he stopped answering his phone.

Taking shelter at a nearby hotel wasn't an option because they were only accommodating paying customers and had closed off their lobby area. The hotel was charging extravagant rates as well which the store employee was unable to pay and calling their contacts related to their job didn't help either. "I called the local emergency response, but they are splitting resources already in the main areas that are suffering from snowfall. They said it could take several hours to get someone up here and by then the situation will be much worse," the post continued. 

"I don't know why he would do this knowing that a worker is stuck here, I'm just left to sit here trapped at work, panicking about whether the power will go out," the person concluded in the post. They attached a short video of the terrible snowstorm under the post, adding how the snow was starting to pile up higher. The unfortunate employee had no access to the cash container either. The original post followed up with six more updates on the person's situation afterward.

The person mentioned in the following updates that they had made their way to a hotel and were safe. They quit the job for obvious reasons and decided to take legal action against the company, as well as file a criminal case against their boss for ditching them in a critical situation at the workplace. The boss who ditched the employee lied to another manager of the store and said he had closed early because there was snow piled up on the road at a time and that no employee was present at the store (contrary to the truth).

"The company will not cover the hotel and will be removing all unauthorized extra hours from yesterday, saying that my boss called in saying he closed the store not long after noon. This is of course not true, but since the higher-ups accepted that, not knowing what happened, they say no one should have been clocked in after that time, so all my extra hours and overtime stuck there will not be compensated," the individual further wrote. "It looks like the only chance I have is to go after the company legally (and my boss criminally) to get anything out of this. Sadly, I'll need to quit the job. After a talk with one supervisor this morning though, they were on the verge of firing me anyway."

"I was able to find a credible professional who tells me that not only do they believe that they can, in their words, easily file civil suits against the company and my boss, but they want to go over all the details to explore possible criminal charges against my boss as well. They are going to come to my area to discuss this issue and the next steps on Monday. I'm hoping it works out and this goes somewhere. Right now, I'm feeling optimistic and hope I'm right in doing so," the employee wrote in a final update. The Reddit community was furious with the way this poor employee's boss ditched them in a crisis.

While many offered help to get the employee the hotel room during the snowstorm, others came up with suggestions on how to make the company and the boss pay back. u/anonymousforever suggested, "Also take a few selfies so you have proof you're there. The metadata in the pictures and the date/time stamps will back up your being there." u/PCouture wrote, "If you can, you need to immediately contact your company's HR and tell them the manager abandoned the store, putting you in an unsafe situation that could possibly become dangerous." u/dukeofgibbon added, "Putting you in a situation where he denied you the ability to leave by inaction sounds like kidnapping."