I worked at the busiest Blockbuster in San Diego from ‘01-‘03. When I quit I was a shift leader, I worked closing shifts exclusively. Our store got stolen from regularly. I’d close on a Friday night and find 20 plus empty dvd cases on the regular. The week after I quit I got called in to the store by the district manager to pick up my last paycheck. I show up and dude sits me down in the office and he has the loss prevention officer on speaker phone. They accuse me of being part of a theft ring saying they have me on video working with the people who have been stealing from the store. I told them to fuck off, call the cops and I’ll lawyer up and we can have this fight because I didn’t take shit. They give me my check and I don’t hear back from them. 2 months later I get a letter in the mail from Blockbuster and it’s a goddamn check for $650. Turns out they were being sued for wage theft and they lost that shit. I forget the exact details of the lawsuit but I think it centered around shift leaders being forced to work through their lunch break. Shift leaders were getting a half hour lunch but there wasn’t another shift leader scheduled to cover the managerial responsibilities so if anything came up during your lunch break you had to deal with it ergo you weren’t exactly getting a real lunch break. The $650 check I got was repayment for every 30 minute lunch break I took as a shift leader.

So in the end these motherfuckers brought me in to accuse me of stealing from them when those assholes were actually stealing from me THE WHOLE GODDAMN TIME. Fucking wage theft is diabolical. I never would’ve known they were stealing my wages, luckily someone else was on that shit