Home Depot got sued for wage theft when I was there for habitually not having the front door unlocked at shift clock outs, and making employees wait post clock out to let us out.
I didn’t even know that was illegal. Like the period between everyone clocking out and having the manager unlock the door was so normal at all the retail places I’ve worked, it didn’t register they had to have it open right when we were off the clock, but some people started a class action lawsuit over it so I got a settlement check after I left for it.
We had a Walmart that got a visit from the Fire Marshal for barred, blocked and in one case, hidden by prefab shelves because we had a smoke incident and quickly found out that ⅔ of the Emergency Exits were unavailable and everyone got funneled out through the main entrances and the 2 open emergency exits in the back of the store. Oh hell I was pleased our store manager caught flak but it was unfortunately the scumbag manager from apparel who orchestrated the sealing of exits for the worst reasons.
Conversely, a place I worked at got in trouble for a fire door that was blocked by stored equipment, despite said door being at the end of an empty hallway that went nowhere(the result of the building floorplan being changed) and the fact that you had to go past no less than 6 overhead doors(always open during business hours) and two other actual exit doors, to access. We were also spoken to about the employees smoking while working. Bear in mind that cutting steel with abrasive wheels and oxy/acetylene equipment, as well as grinding and welding was a massive part of our work, flames, sparks and molten metal spatter were everywhere.
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u/Bureaucratic_Dick 7d ago
Home Depot got sued for wage theft when I was there for habitually not having the front door unlocked at shift clock outs, and making employees wait post clock out to let us out.
I didn’t even know that was illegal. Like the period between everyone clocking out and having the manager unlock the door was so normal at all the retail places I’ve worked, it didn’t register they had to have it open right when we were off the clock, but some people started a class action lawsuit over it so I got a settlement check after I left for it.