A travel agency worker says they exposed their manager for changing payroll records and underpaying staff over a period of 18 months. The employee shared the experience on Reddit under the username u/Confident_Oil788, saying they found that their manager was rounding down work hours and changing attendance logs on purpose to lower staff pay.
As the post says, the issue came to light after the worker noticed their paycheck was regularly lower than it should have been, despite working long hours. After looking into the gaps, the employee claims to have found that the manager was logging lunch breaks as longer than they actually were. The manager was also marking sick days as unpaid, even when employees had sick leave available to use.
To protect themselves, the employee said they started taking screenshots of their clock-in and clock-out times to keep a record of their real work hours. The manager later found out about this and demanded that the images be deleted, claiming the screenshots held confidential information. The employee refused, saying the records only showed their own personal shift times.
Manager’s complaint to head office leads to wider review of pay records
The manager then allegedly reported the employee to the head office, accusing them of breaking company policy by taking the screenshots. According to the post, this did not work out as the manager had hoped.
On the same day, the employee says they sent an email to the head office with all the evidence they had collected showing the manager’s alleged wrongdoing. According to the postmaker, the head office found the manager’s complaint about the screenshots odd, but treated the employee’s evidence seriously and quickly set up a meeting.
Workers pushing back after feeling shortchanged by their employer is not unique to this case. In another instance, Amazon warehouse staff said they got an unusual response after asking for better pay.
According to the National Institute for Workers’ Rights, estimates that wage theft costs workers about $15 billion annually. Common forms of wage theft include paying below the minimum wage, denying overtime pay or misclassifying workers as overtime-exempt, and failing to compensate employees for all hours worked.
People online shared their own knowledge and advice in response to the post. One commenter, who said they work in internal fraud for a large company, wrote: “I work in internal fraud for a large company and I’ve seen this before. I’m very curious what the final total loss will be for theft of hours.”
“Good for you keeping track and there’s nothing wrong with you keeping your own payslips. Your job should be secure if you’ve done nothing wrong. You probably won’t know the outcome of the investigation other than that person no longer being at work. Good catch and good luck!”
Another commenter offered more detailed guidance, writing, “Assuming you’re in the US, you can also go to your state’s Wage and Hour Division to make a claim of unpaid hours. I believe they can go back 3 years to determine the number of missing hours, and possibly charge interest.”
“They wouldn’t just look at your claim, but also possibly see how many other people were not being paid for hours worked. This is something the company definitely wants to avoid”. Or maybe all your coworkers if they were also shorter and possibly want to join in on a class action suit.”
The same commenter added, “You could file with the federal Wage and Hour Division with the Department of Labor, however most federal agencies are currently short staffed, and in the current climate no federal agency is on the side of employees. Though I don’t think it would be enforceable, don’t sign an NDA saying you won’t also file a claim with Wage and Hour.”
Customers and workers alike have increasingly relied on documentation to hold companies accountable, much like one customer did when pushing back on inadequate outage compensation from his service provider.
The final outcome of the head office’s investigation has not been made public. This account is based solely on the postmaker’s version of events. Neither the company nor the manager involved has publicly commented on the matter.
Published: Jun 20, 2026 09:30 am