It was a wild ride. Any time I tell folks about this place, it blows them away what kind of things the company got away with. There’s probably tons of stuff I don’t even know about…

But I did just recall another gem:

The company often times didn’t have enough money in their business account to cover all paychecks. On a couple occasions when I went to the bank to cash it, they told me I had to wait because there weren’t enough funds. When it happened one time, I got super pissed, drove to the office on a Saturday and demanded they put cash in my hand. I embarrassed one of the owners in the lobby when I held up my paycheck and said “I can’t cash this.” They were only able to front me $100 and I made accounting give me a receipt as proof. They would regularly tell us to wait until Monday. So they were writing checks that were worthless.

They’re primarily for companies to advertise using their fleet vehicles, but folks get them for appearances too (you can get textures and colors of all sorts). It’s a vinyl material often made by 3M that is super resilient and is installed using a heat gun, squeegees, utility knife, and patience. It’s not primarily used as a protective layer but conveniently doubles as one.

I’ve probably told this story a million times now.

Had a boss that was clearly an entitled, arrogant, hand-fed asshole his entire life. He used to pull all kinds of illegal shit at his company. I’ll bullet this to save time:

• Asked me one time if I wanted to do some web dev work for the company website. He wouldn’t tell me what he was willing to pay or anything and said I had to accept first. I refused because he wouldn’t tell me. The kicker: his web dev team was waiting in the lobby to meet with him. He was trying to undercut them by underpaying me to do their work.
• He was paying a woman under the table illegally as a favor to a friend. Pretty sure she was in the country without a visa. I didn’t give a shit about that (fuck ICE) and never said anything. What pissed me off was that he was clearly exploiting her and not paying her well.
• He regularly tried to force people into signing pieces of paper that would outline an error made, and would try to garner the wages of employees to cover it. This is highly illegal but some people signed and in one instance, a woman had $800 taken from her pay over a few weeks. They tried to pull this on a colleague and I for a job we had never even heard of. It was obvious he thought we could be scared into signing. Get fucked, pal.
• He tried to make me do work off the clock once and I was essentially fired until it was done. For context we installed and designed vehicle wraps. I was a designer that ran a 54” printer. We had a ton of client jobs come in so I was pretty busy. He calls over to the office I’m in (we had 2 locations) and tells me he needs some stickers for his own vehicle pretty quickly. I tell him we’re pretty busy but I’ll fit them in. Fast forward a few days or so. His stickers aren’t done because I’m swamped and customer work comes first. He tells me (through my manager) that I have to print, drive to the other office (1 hour round trip with a paid toll), and install the decals off the clock because I’m essentially fired until it’s done or I’m fired fired. This was the last straw for me. I tell my manager verbatim “I’m not fucking doing that,” clock out and go home—never to return.
• Fast forward a few weeks. I get a notice that the company has reported me for getting unemployment benefits without being fired. So a phone mediation session gets scheduled between myself, the dickhead, and an unemployment office person. The owner lies the entire time saying that they called me multiple times and I refused to answer. I call bullshit and ask if they’d like me to obtain phone records. Silence. Of course because employees have zero fucking power in the US, I’m told I have to pay back the unemployment and they rule in the company’s favor. I tell them “I’m not paying back a single penny of this” and hang up on everyone. Every time the mail came stating what I had to pay, I tore it up and threw it away. No one ever came after me.
• It gets worse. I hear from a woman that works there that she won a court case against him. Apparently he called her late at night, super drunk, and verbally harassed her with sexual comments. He had a wife and kid at the time (I say that because I’m pretty sure his wife divorced him over this). He also had to take a massive hit to pay out the settlement. Fucking piece of shit human finally getting what they deserve.