In Feburary, Lynda was laid off of her job. As a result, we decided that she would take over the household bills. By early March, she was saying that she couldn't find any deposits from Proactive but I didn't get to look into this until the end of March. At that time, I confirmed that no deposits had occured.
I alerted Jason via email on 3/31.
Jason said he'd check into it. On 4/15, he informed me that he had contacted Paychex and they acknowledged that the checks had not been deposited into my account. He asked them to credit his account and he would re-issue manual checks to me.
On 4/21, I deposited 6 checks totaling 8,460.48 into my checking account. On 4/28, ALL 6 BOUNCED and I was assessed a bank fee of $120 ($20 per check).
On Tuesday 4/29, I informed Jason via email and followed up with him via a phone call the following morning. He said he would check into it.
On 4/30, Jason pulled me into his office to tell me that the reason the checks had bounced was that the IRS had taken over $20,000 out of his account. The background is that last fall (2007), he was contacted by the IRS and after some investigation found out that he had not issued quarterly checks to the IRS because he was relying on Quickbooks to tell him. He had met with the IRS agents and thought he had an arrangement where he would pay $1000/month until it was paid off. He showed me a report of at least 4 payments to the IRS for $1000 starting in January.
He said this was devastating and that there was now less than $1000 in the corporate account. I asked him to provide me with a plan to pay me what he owed me. He said to give him a day or two to come up with a plan.
On Tuesday May 6, he gave me my pay check for 4/16 through 4/30. I asked him if it was going to bounce and he said no. Later that day I asked him what the plan was. He said he had secured a loan but that it wouldn't fund for up to 14 days but with receivables, he thought he was OK. I asked him if he could give me $5000 by Friday (5/9) and he said that should be OK.
On Friday (5/9), he gave me 3 checks: $1204.95, $2072.7, $1268.35 - totaling $4546.00. I told him I was going strait to the bank and cash them. He said since I was going would I mind making a depoist for him. I took those, along with the paycheck for the 2nd half of April, strait over to the washington mutal bank branch from which the checks were written. First they told me that I couldn't cash them because they have a $2500 limit on cash. So, I requested a bank check (which would have cost me $20). They said they could not issue a bank check for the full amount. Including the April check, the total was $6779.25. They told me they could give me a bank check for all but the smallest check. However, since this would have cost me $20, I chose to cash the $2072.70 check.
I took the other three checks back to Jason and handed them to him and told him that I would be happy to report to work on Monday if he could meet me there with a certified check for the amount of those checks. He agreed to do that and didn't understand why there was insufficient money in the account.
Today (5/12), at 8:12am I received a phone call from my co-worker asking why I wasn't going to Tactx (a customer). I told Steven that I was expecting to hear from Jason regarding that. Steven mentioned that Jason told Steven to report to Tactx today.
I called Jason and left him a message asking if he was planning on meeting me at Tactx with the check. I again called him at 8:46 asking for status. Both times, I left a voicemail. The second time I told him about my call with Steven and so I was not planning on going to Tactx today.
Those are the essential and verifiable facts that I have access to as of today.
There were many more conversations regarding this subject and it is further complicated by changes to the compensation model and migrating to a web-based tool for tracking expenses and compensation.
You may ask why I gave him the ultimatum on Friday. My reasons are complicated but mainly due to a lack of trust. I believed that if he was able to get the money to me that it would prove two very important things:
- That He acknowledged his responsibility as an employer to pay his employees in a timely manner and that he takes this responsibility seriously enough to spend time on a Saturday to get a bank check for me.
- That he truly had a handle on his corporate finances when he agreed to give me the bank check this morning.
Additionally, the fact that he did not call me before calling Steven and has not called me yet today, would indicate that he may be preparing some type of legal action. Perhaps he is mad that I gave him the ultimatum. Of course, I can only speculate.
I suppose it is possible that he is trying to find the funds to get me back to work and won't call me until he has secured that. However, if this were true, I would expect him to call me and let me know he is doing that. Not calling me or sending email or text messaging me is a clear signal that he is not interested in resolving the issue.
In addition to the back pay mentioned above, there is the time I worked since the beginning of May along with car expenses and a drill bit that I bought for the company. Plus there is the bank charge of $120 for bouncing his checks.
Jason is a Christian Brother and I do not intend to pursue a legal course of action at this time. I post this here so that I may point selected Christian brothers at the facts in hopes that we can come together and resolve this as brothers in Christ.
