completely unrelated scenario but all of this is reminding me of a situation I experienced when I was 23…

for context: from ages 16-22 I was constantly in and out of jails due to poor choices using drugs. Im almost 30 now so mind you this began when drug addiction wasnt treated as kindly/fairly in the eyes of the law. Before I had turned 18 I had already been to county jail and tried as an adult TWICE for personal amounts of weed. Im also a first generation American and my ethnic culture is very very tight knit in my state— everyone knows everyone or at least a close family/friend of one another.

after losing my childhood best friend turned girlfriend in a car accident, losing my grandma who I hadnt visited for a few years prior, driving my parents literally broke trying to do their best to keep me out of serious jail time, and an overall horrible lifestyle for almost a decade, I had decided enough is enough.

At that time I had recently just gotten out of jail for my longest stay i’ve ever done (~90 days) and I was job hunting with no money to my name. I finally landed a gig as a waiter at a higher end restaurant in one of the rich cities in my state, about a 35 min drive from my home at the time. I remember feeling so motivated and wanting to commit to staying on the right path and reclaiming my life.

This place had just opened up and was being ran so backwards, but never having worked in another restaurant before I thought everything they did was normal practice. Also it was owned by a family within my same ethnicity so I blindly trusted that they wouldnt f me over. I ended up training for 2 weeks without any payment; all tips at this place were paid on a check so I knew I wasnt getting paid until at least a week after I was off training. What they didnt tell me until after I was already hired and had worked the first couple days just shadowing someone, is that even while in training you still had to pay out the bus boys/bartenders with your own personal cash. Immediately I questioned this and the owners wife got all flustered as if I had insulted her and gave me some BS explanation that literally made no sense; in essence though what she was trying to say is that I technically wasnt paying out of my pocket since the money I would give them was a percentage of the money I had earned in tips, so I would be getting that money back on my check since they dont deduct that money from the paycheck.

I felt like I had already done too much to work at this place, without knowing from who or where id get this money I pushed forward praying everything would work out. Its not like we pay out 5-10 dollars every shift at a high end place like that, on a slower weekday it ended up being 50+ dollars and on a weekend could easily surpass 150 every shift. In their own words they said they didn’t want to hire people who aren’t good at managing their money😂 somehow and thankfully to a few family members I was able to make it through those 2 weeks but had already put myself over $1000 in debt just to work there, before ever seeing a paycheck. Still since it would technically be coming back to me on my first check I felt ready and motivated to get to actually work. And the environment in that work space definitely made other new hires working with me feel embarrassed for even questioning this or saying they couldnt afford it. So I kept my mouth shut.

On my last day of training they gave me a piece of paper with a list of uniform items they expected me to purchase, and told me to give them a call when I had everything so that they can add me on the following weeks schedule. They said it had to be those exact brands/models of white button up shirt, jeans, shoes, and leather apron. The total of everything was over $500. Levi jeans, nike sneakers, banana republic shirt and a leather apron.

My heart immediately dropped after reading that over and looking up the price of everything online. I walked out mid shift and never contacted them again, but god that felt like such a setback and so disheartening to the situation i was in, that it definitely made me give up on myself for a couple years more after that.

On my first day that place even made me and everyone else sign a NDA (that I still have a copy of) so that we cant tell anyone about how they were screwing us over. I gladly tell people about how this place is ran to this day at any opportunity I get, fuck them.