Well how do you like that, the check really was in the mail--- just not all of it

By Dian Vujovich

Yippee skippy. My friend in the Keys told me yesterday that the long-awaited check for tar ball training from the company with a name that sounds way too much like the R2-D2 droid character in the movie “Star Wars” did in fact arrive. Yes, P2S paid up. Only problem was, it wasn’t the amount promised.

When they, (whomever the ‘they’ may be but usually it’s an authority of some sort), tell you that your pay is going to be such-and-such, make sure to get it in writing. That’s what my Key’s pal and others participating in P2S’s training wish they had done. Seems as though the pay received was at a 20 dollar per-hour rate rather than the understood 22 bucks.

While there are plenty of folks who wouldn’t complain about getting 20 bucks an hour for sitting through more than three-days of classroom education, if the hourly pay isn’t what was verbally promised, well, that leaves room for a gripe. Problem is, gripe before or after the check is cashed. Or maybe not at all.

Griping is something that’s best done with documentation. In this case, there was no documentation from the company, only a check that a recipient said wasn’t in the right amount. Getting what was expected to be a total of $68 more would require time, phone calls, maybe even a letter or two, and perhaps not spending the check. If the individual did want to deposit the check and then file a complaint, at the very least they’d better make a copy of it before taking any action.

My friend opted for not griping figuring that complaining would take too much time. And in these challenging economic times, thought that a-bird-in-the-hand philosophy was the best one to follow.

I’m not sure what I would have done under those same circumstances. I like birds, but not in my hand. They’ve been known to leave a mess there, you know.