Department of Labor Audit

[TheFugitive]

I recall an incident involving these guys that happened in our Ames store in Michigan.

One of our employees, a 16 year-old girl, went out on a date after her shift at Ames ended.
Apparently she did not tell her parents.  And she got home quite late.

When she did get home and was confronted, she told them that she had been at work.
(we closed at 9:30 and she would have been released shortly afterwards...it seems she got home
from her date sometime after midnight).

Instead of making the obvious assumption that their daughter was lying....or at least calling the
store to confirm what time her shift had ended....her parents responded by filing a formal complaint
with the Michigan Department of Labor.

They sent in the storm troopers.  Parked themselves in our office and demanded to see EVERY time card for EVERY underage employee over a six-month period.

The good news is, this confirmed that the teenage employee in question was not in our store at
midnight on the day in question.

The bad news is....this did not stop the DOL from going through all the time cards and nailing us with
a violation for EVERY teenage employee whose punches did not line-up with exact the requirements of the law.

This includes those who punched out ONE MINUTE LATE for their mandatory 30-minute meal break.

The end result was a huge heaping fine to Ames.  And an extreme reluctance to hire teenagers going forward.
They did not seem to understand that it is a virtual impossibility to get a couple dozen minimum-wage teen employees to clock in-and-out correctly on every single occasion.  Nor did they care.  Just a big revenue grab for the state.

Sensing they had struck paydirt, the DOL did not immediately go back to Lansing, but instead hung around town and audited the time cards of EVERY merchant on our street.  They put the poor guy who owned the Dairy Queen out of business.