One of our team members is still technically owed a paycheck from her very first place of employment.
She was working at a specialty toy store in a strip mall. The store sold a curated selection of toys, some educational, some collectible, some very niche, some mainstream. These included things like Steiff teddy bears, fancy collectible porcelain dolls, including the American Girl line, Thomas the Tank Engine and other train sets, and pogs - those little cardboard discs that you used a slammer to flip over. Why yes, this was 1994, why do you ask?
She was a part-time employee who began working for the store in September. Her tasks included running the register, cleaning the bathroom (this could be it's own Spooky Story), gift-wrapping for those who paid for the service, and she did in fact become an expert for a short time on the aforementioned pogs; a lot of the pog sales were solidly attributable to her.
The owners scheduled her to the fullest extent of her part-time availability throughout December, all the way up to and including Christmas Eve. After December 24th, she was never scheduled again, never formally fired, and never notified that she could pick up her last paycheck; she was ghosted like a bad Tinder date.
The company went out of business a few years later.
