(I saw all the signs and still trusted — Part 2)
Read part one to follow my journey of being scammed as a naive international student.
The CEO didn’t relay any message to the workers, but I’d overheard the rumors that the company was struggling with expenses and hence they had delayed paying the salary. It had been deferred by 10 days. All this time I’d been thinking I should’ve quit earlier. Why I had stuck on to this place and brought this upon myself was a knowledge even I wished to discover. I was now scared, of retaliation, of not getting paid at all for quitting. Hence, I decided to wait it out until I received my pay.
I’d been bleeding under the skin of my toe; it was black and red and blue. It had been hurting terribly almost to the point where I was limping. I’d had severe gastrointestinal issue due to terrible eating schedules at work. To the point when one day I had to leave work halfway. I’d been feeling terrible for weeks and I neglected my health over what I don’t know.
Here 10 days had gone by with no talk, no news on future probable pay date. Why on earth do I have to plead to get paid for my work, I don’t understand. Other workers had been whispering, some had gotten paid. I felt this at a personal level. I was amongst first to be hired, I had stuck by him and didn’t leave midway unlike the other guy. I was unable to comprehend, why he would delay my pay at all. As the pressure builds up, I can’t seem to calm down. I take it upon myself to speak with the CEO directly instead of speaking with my manager first. I didn’t care of the consequences. If he was to tell me to quit for questioning him at that moment I would. And so, I go and to talk with him about my pay officially. Although, I feel a bit intimidated when I’m in his presence I speak up, bring about the issues of working at restaurant while hospital launched, not being transferred to work there and now not being paid. He looks at my solemnly the whole time and says that he was worried for me, on how I would settle at hospital when I had made friends here, while at hospital amongst new collogues he worried I would be ostracized. He confirms with me that cafe would officially be starting a week later. He promises to pay me 50% of the month’s pay and loop in the remaining with the next month, since they were struggling with start-up costs. After several weeks in, specifically a month into working at the restaurant, knowing that cafe training was to start in the coming week made me feel relieved. I’d been feeling nauseous working at the restaurant and was about to quit. I knew I had my chance at the hospital since the CEO had been avoiding any further conversation on the topic.
While prep for cafe starts, I felt recognized for he had at least heard me out and thus I accept his bullshit.
I am unable to comprehend how I could have been so dumb. I got paid an amount, and it was less than even 40% of the whole month unlike 50% he had promised.
I start working at the cafe, working at cafe feels like walking on breeze. It feels so much easier. Since restaurant work felt like a bulldozer had run over me. I’ve come to know that although I worked at restaurant my pay there wasn’t on same terms with those of restaurant workers. Despite me having worked same and at times more, I would be paid a lot less, for I was just a substitute. The reasoning being they were helping cafe workers by keeping them employed instead of firing until cafe issue was solved.
I thought I was being forced to work at restaurant, while here, they made it all seem like a god sent gift on a below average pay.
BUT ABOVE ALL I HADN’T EVEN BEEN PAID MY FULL MONTH’S SALARY.
Days go by as I wait eagerly for the month to end and receive my pay. But I’ve been hearing that he isn’t going to pay this time as well. There is a lot of expenses and cost… that the business is trying to recover… and hence workers shall again be the scapegoat for his benefits. He makes money but doesn’t have money to pay the workers. He makes money and uses it for reinvestment into the business at the expense of labor. The same labor that brings in the money. So that means you put up a business, want workers who basically run your business cause that’s the kind of industry restaurant and cafe come under, but you hide when you have to pay them. Where in the f*ck lies your conscience, shouldn’t one been paying the employees who worked hard for one’s business first.
I’m starting to hate the quote ‘When you come and work here, we treat you like a family’. This is the rant I have with my coworkers and manager every single day. I think my manager is a sub, or she is getting paid for she never says anything.
A worker at cafe quits as she thinks this is a scam, and she is from this country!! This feels like a slap. I think I’ve made a huge mistake by continuing, not quitting, falling in because of a random guy’s words (In case the readers have forgotten it’s the guy who was hired same time as me and who pleaded me not to leave). I feel lost, worried and anxious as days pass by. I am now waiting on almost 2 month’s pay. I ask my ex-colleagues who had quit way earlier on whether they’d received their pay and nope they still hadn’t.
And finally, after all the times and signs that were out there so clear, almost shouting at me to quit since the very beginning, I decided and made a plan to quit. I gave my 2 weeks’ notice saying there will be schedule conflict with school as the semester is about to start. I hoped fervently that me leaving in such drama free manner and being helpful until the very end meant I would get paid. My ex-colleagues had left without giving any notice, made sense why they still weren’t paid.
And thus, I leave…
If there was a deafening silent sound, then that’s what rings in my ears when I think back on my 4 months with this company. The people I met, the experiences I had, makes me feel stupid, unworthy and unconfident of for my life.
It has been over a year now since that incident and I still haven’t been paid. Countless of messages and countless of replies that said he didn’t have enough money to pay my salary at that moment. Knowing I was a foreigner amongst them, a student, a minority, it was my own stupidity… It became a trauma for me. I trusted this man who was my CEO, too much until it turned to hate and self-doubt for my own self.
Why people fall for scammers?
We’ve all seen movies like Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened, Inventing Anna, The Wolf of Wall Street and so on, all based on true events. People have wondered something definitely seemed off; while they still fell in the trap and how on earth did this person does not manage to figure out until the very last minute. Maybe it is an ingrained human desire that makes them to believe that there’s something out there bigger than their imagination. For now, seven years after such a big fiasco of Fyre luxury music festival, with fraud of $26 million, eight lawsuits and the organizer Billy McFarland having done a stint in jail, it will be relaunching again and first drop of tickets had also sold out!
Thus, I have come to the terms that even after people are duped, they are willing to go through the same ordeal, for what if something beautiful comes out of it. And although I duped of 2 months’ worth of precious time and money, which obviously seems too little compared to such big frauds, I still can’t comprehend why I fell into this big of a mess. Not that I had time to play around with, or money to throw.
That business shut down one month after I left. There are more than 50 people, still waiting on their salaries. Few months in, I saw another business open at the same spot with similar cafe/restaurant — first floor second floor concept. I realized soon enough that they were the same people with different names trying to evade paying salary to previous employees. After some time even that was shut down. The hospital and pharmacy too had vanished. The whole building now still stays there, empty and as if nothing of such sort had occurred. If someone is to go there now, they wouldn’t know what lies there is massacre of exploitative labor work, unpaid employees and a tyrant CEO.
Even now my eyes glaze over with guilt, anger, shame and sadness for all the time wasted. But I’ve also come to realize that this might be a thing some start-ups do hoping to boom up someday on the carcasses of previous employee’s time, dreams and money.
To the readers, I ask one thing, criticize me all you want but I want to know if you’ve too had these feeling, and how did you cope with it?
But that’s not the end of this scam journey. Stay tuned to find out what happens next, from tax fraud to a court case! Follow along for all the details!
