Monday, March 05, 2007

Things are going UP UP UP!!!!!

I had a few phone calls about my last post. All is well – no worries. To answer a few questions I got – I am NOT pregnant and we are NOT fighting.

Better!!

LI GOT A NEW JOB!!!

This is a big deal right now.
He has had the worst of luck and a very rude awakening to the world of low life bosses. It has hit us very hard in the pocket book to put it mildly. We have been quite stressed the last two months but things should be looking brighter starting now.

So a bit of history to try to explain.

Li was working for a hotel in town whose kitchen was in dire need of some care and attention. Li was put on an ok salary to start and went at er all excited about the opportunities. This excitement was quickly squashed by the manager hiring drug addicts and alcoholics to work in the restaurant (literally, it was scary) because he was refusing to offer a decent hourly wage to attract experienced people.
Li was running in circles.
Then he was supposed to be only an evening supervisor and was getting called in to take over in the morning, help with banquets in the afternoon and so on. He was putting in tons more hours per week and his salary just wasn’t working out any more and his boss would not give him a raise.
So we kept our eyes open and noticed a very popular restaurant advertising for a kitchen manager. Li put his resume in and the guy called. He promised Li full time and a reasonably decent wage to start with. Li asked for more but the guy said to give him a month till the other chef left and then they would talk. Li liked the look of the kitchen and the locals talk favorable of this place so Li decided to go for it.
His first month at this place was December , aka busy, and things went well, boss was impressed with Li and things were fine.
On January 2nd the boss told Li that guy he was supposed to replace wasn’t quitting yet, that he couldn’t give him full time anymore and that he would have to drop his wage down THREE DOLLARS per hour. I lost it. I talked to the boss and let him know that I was disgusted: without yelling - proud of myself. We didn’t have much ground to stand on. We got some info from the job employment people about what course of action we could take but we couldn’t really do anything without a back up job.
So Li just went to work, did his job and waited for an opportunity out. Both of us thought that the kitchen guy that Li was supposed to replace was never going to leave, especially with Li there. We think he told the boss he was going to leave in hopes to wrangle a better salary out of him. That didn’t work so he was sticking it out.
We kept our eyes open and constantly scanned the want ads and last week we found one asking for chefs at a very popular Greek restaurant in town. Li brought his resume in and the son of the owner said that they had actually already found people but took his resume any way. The owner called him up the next day to talk to him – told him that he would like to try him out for two days before he decided on a wage set.
Li himmed and hawed about that then asked him if he could look through the kitchen first to see what it was like. Li was very impressed with the kitchen, its set up and cleanliness and the boss and him chatted the whole while. After the walk through the owner told him that he had a really good feeling about him, that he didn’t need a trial period, and that he wanted to start him immediately on salary working five days a week. Li told him what had happened at the other job and the guy said that if he felt more comfortable he would write up a contract for him. This happened on Friday. YAA!! The salary is decent and will be a major boost to our red dept hole that has been freaking us out.
Li told the old boss he was leaving but would work this weekend because it was the nice thing to do even though he is a prat. The old boss almost passed out and started begging him to give him more time. Turns out the other chef finally called it quits and gave the owner zero notice. (Guess that is what happens when you treat your employees like crapolla)
Li looked at him and said, “I have a family to feed and bills to pay, you promised me a decent wage and full time and you are giving me nothing. I need to this job.”
The boss was silent. What could he say.
He begged again and Li went, “sure if you are willing to pay me a hundred bucks a day because that is what I will be getting at the new place.” The guy doesn’t and Li is GONE!!

And now we can safety fight him for the money he owes us from the last two months from him illegally slashing Li’s hourly wage. Don’t know if we will ever see it but I am not going to let it slide for the sake of others that this prat might do that to.


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Posted by (Top)Andrea::3/05/2007 :: 7 Comments:

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