An interesting turn of events this morning when I went up to the office tower at the other marina to sign in for work, and was told that I’ve been laid off. When I picked up the regular sign in sheet that we always put our hours worked down on, the owner said not to sign in on it, but to use the one for another company instead. I told her that I signed in and out on the same time sheet I always use last year for the ‘big clean’, but she said, “That’s the way we’ve always done it, you’re laid off and should sign up over at the restaurant. While the big clean is going on, everyone works for 10 dollars an hour cash”.
Exaggerating a bit, I said, “But that’s only like six dollars an hour after taxes!” to which she replied, “But we are paying you cash, that’s tax free!”. Flabbergasted, I replied that “a person still has to pay taxes on it, it’s still income”, but was answered with, “that’s the way we’ve always done it”, like that was the end of the story.
The only thing I could think of to say then was, “That’s highly unusual, you better get me my lay-off paperwork then first”, expecting to see my ‘pink slip’ ready to go and instead she said, “I don’t have time for that right now” as she walked away back into her apartment. So I’m standing there, what to do next?
For lack of anything better to do, I went and talked to the other employees that were around, and a couple of them had already started working and signed in on the $10/hour cash time sheet at the other company, and a couple of them just were standing around drinking coffee wondering what to do. I waited about 15 minutes for my foreman to show up, he didn’t, so I went back to the office tower to see if my Record of Employment was ready yet. She seemed to be pretty busy, her husband was with her by then and they were doing something, but I asked again anyways to make sure about the paperwork, and it wasn’t ready. I told them it was no problem, I could get it later, and left one of the oddest experiences I’ve had in my 35 odd years of working life.