J.Burnside
Junior Member
From Florida:
As a private Music Teacher, I rent a studio at a local Music store. The way the store runs is that for each student, a certain amount of the cost of the lesson is paid to the Instructor, and a certain amount is paid to the business as rent for using the room. Besides teaching, the Instructors are also paid an hourly wage by the owners for hours put in working at the store for things like helping with counter sales, and opening and closing the store when asked to do so. Sometimes, one or more of us have been asked to cancel lessons so we can totally run the store if the owners are unavailable for reasons such as vacations. Last year, the store had some major renovations done, and in our free time away from teaching, some of us were asked to work extra hours to help out. When some of the renovations over ran the estimated costs, and money was a little tight, what we agreed to do was work and then deduct what was owed to us for the hours we worked off of the amount that we would have paid back to the store for studio rental.
When the money situation was better, the store still owed me money, so I asked the owners to pay me the rest of what they owed me. 2 days later, they presented me with a statement stating that all along, in addition to the agreed upon amount that I was paying them per student as rent for my studio, they had also been charging me an additional $75.00 a week rent. They said it offset what they owed me, and then they fired me. I was never informed in writing, or verbally that I was being charged that additional $75.00 amount per week. No Instructor here would have ever agreed to that considering some weeks, like during Holiday weeks when so many students were gone, that would have made us actually losing money to work here.
I was told that since I never had an oral, or written contract with them agreeing to pay the addition amount, and all that was ever agreed upon was the rate per student, that what they did was not legal.
Obvious all they did was trump up some bill to get out of paying me, but I'm not sure exactly what my rights are.
As a private Music Teacher, I rent a studio at a local Music store. The way the store runs is that for each student, a certain amount of the cost of the lesson is paid to the Instructor, and a certain amount is paid to the business as rent for using the room. Besides teaching, the Instructors are also paid an hourly wage by the owners for hours put in working at the store for things like helping with counter sales, and opening and closing the store when asked to do so. Sometimes, one or more of us have been asked to cancel lessons so we can totally run the store if the owners are unavailable for reasons such as vacations. Last year, the store had some major renovations done, and in our free time away from teaching, some of us were asked to work extra hours to help out. When some of the renovations over ran the estimated costs, and money was a little tight, what we agreed to do was work and then deduct what was owed to us for the hours we worked off of the amount that we would have paid back to the store for studio rental.
When the money situation was better, the store still owed me money, so I asked the owners to pay me the rest of what they owed me. 2 days later, they presented me with a statement stating that all along, in addition to the agreed upon amount that I was paying them per student as rent for my studio, they had also been charging me an additional $75.00 a week rent. They said it offset what they owed me, and then they fired me. I was never informed in writing, or verbally that I was being charged that additional $75.00 amount per week. No Instructor here would have ever agreed to that considering some weeks, like during Holiday weeks when so many students were gone, that would have made us actually losing money to work here.
I was told that since I never had an oral, or written contract with them agreeing to pay the addition amount, and all that was ever agreed upon was the rate per student, that what they did was not legal.
Obvious all they did was trump up some bill to get out of paying me, but I'm not sure exactly what my rights are.