Continuation from previous post...Given my strong willpower and endurance, I battled valiantly on in the company. Even when she rail at me everyday I just ignore the mad dog’s barks. The spark that ignited my resignation was when my group got invited to Chicago for a film festival that we had submitted our final year project documentary. I had to take leave last minute for 9-11 days to go to Chicago. When I informed her, she was alright with giving me the leave, and DIDN’T mention ANYTHING about the leave being no pay leave. So happily I spent a great 9 days in Chicago’s snowy and windy city. When I came back on Sunday evening, I felt terribly tired, after 24 hours of flight from US is not funny. I sms-ed one of my fellow colleagues to inform her that I’ll go back to work one day later, cos I was too tired from the flight. And I didn’t want to sms her and argue with her, so I sms-ed another person instead. So for the next day I rested at home.
The next day I went home, she ignored me totally. Not knowing what’s her problem, I just kept away from her. But then days went by and she still didn’t give me any work directly, if she had to give me work, she asked the intern to inform me. So naturally with the drop in workload I was very leisurely at work. Only after 1 week did she asked me to go to her office and confronted me about not informing her that I was taking another day off. I told her I called back to the office and she wasn’t around, so I left a message with someone else, who happened to be that colleague of mine. She said she was pissed with not being informed. So I said alright, next time I’ll make sure I talk to you personally. And I asked if there’s anything else. Then she said no, then I said can I leave now to go back to my work. Then she said fine.
When my cheque came, the sum was as usual. So I dropped the cheque into cheque deposit on that same day. And so the money was transferred the very next day. And a few days later the bank sent me a notice that my cheque was stopped. So I called the bank and they said it was stopped by the person giving it. So I confronted her the very next day. She had the audacity to say that for the number of days that I had been gone she had to deduct money from my pay! I was furious, but at the point in time, I saw no point arguing with her, so I just said fine, just deduct if you want to. Then she asked how many days I had taken leave. So I said 9 days. Then she said she’ll give me another cheque. But she didn’t give it to me immediately.
So the next morning, as usual I had nothing to do. But there wasn’t anyone in the office when I arrived and she arrived shortly after. Then when she came she walked over to me and said that my attitude is very bad, she don’t think that the company can afford to keep me anymore… and at that point in time the rest of the staff came into the office, and she walked into her office…
I was left there confused and wondering what she wanted. I mean if she wanted to sack me then fine. Just give me my pay and I’ll leave. Cos I don’t think I had been behaving badly towards my work at all. I’ve been working overtime like nobody’s business with no extra pay; and cracking my brains and sacrificing my weekends to help her solve the shit that she got herself into for not clarifying details with her clients; and there she’s going on about my bad work attitude???!!! What a B***H!!!
So I told the other girls what she had told me just now and asked if I should go in and confront her if she’s serious about asking me to leave. Cos I saw no point in wasting my time there since she’s not coming out even after 30mins! So I went into her room and confronted her. I asked her if she’s asking me to leave. She said she finds my work attitude is bad. So I said if that’s the case then give me my money and one month’s severance pay, and I’ll leave now. Then she said there’s no such thing as severance pay! Then I said fine, then it’s me quitting, not you asking me to leave. Then I said can you settle my pay now. She said she can’t she’s too busy. Please note that she actually owed me the previous month’s pay also, cos of the stopped cheque. So I asked when can I come to collect my pay then. Then she said next week. So I said I’ll be back next week to collect it then.
In the end, not only did she NOT prepare my cheque. She left the office just before the scheduled time for me to come and collect the cheque. I was furious, as I had called my colleagues to check that she’s in the office and had fixed a time to come. They told me she just suddenly said that she had an appointment on and escaped.
I fixed another time, at the weekend. This time, my furious mum also went down with me. And again she escaped from the office. And the cheque did NOT include my CPF. I called her and she said that she’ll include it in the cheque, but she didn’t. So I called CPF to enquire about this matter, as I realised that she had not been submitting in CPF for me and she owed me a considerable sum of CPF money. They advised me to get the pay slips as proof of my employment status with her, as she did not make us sign any contract when we entered the company and she didn’t give us any pay slips.
In the end, she still didn’t pay me my CPF, this was already the third time I went down, and she only paid me my claims. So I called CPF again. They advised me to send an email to her and cc CPF regarding the CPF payment, and indeed she responded that she’ll submit the CPF for me. But that was only 1 week later that I saw that the amount was entered into my CPF, but still it was short. As she had also deducted CPF for the days that I was on leave in Chicago!
Firstly she forcefully deducted my pay, even though it should have been leave; then she deducts my CPF too!!! I was furious! But that B***H had the upper hand cos due to her lack of HR skills, she HR were in a mess, and all our pay slips were missing, and we had no proof that we worked for her. So it was a battle that I could never win.
To be continued...
