Human Resources and money owed to me

Most of the people in the United States work for a company and a significant number of those work for a company with a Human Resources Department. Not too long ago I was one of them.

When I signed on with this particular company I read the employee manual and one of the benefits was vacation time. Not that unusual, but any unused vacation time at time of separation was to be paid at the hourly rate of the employee.

When I moved on to another job I had vacation time accrued (valued at about $300.00) and waited for my vacation pay to come it didn’t. I called human resources several times to find out where it was and got an answering machine and no reply. As you know sometimes “life gets in the way”. Afer a while I forgot about it. 

One day, six months later, I remembered that I hadn’t received an answer or the money owed me. So, I called my PrePaid Legal provider. Part of the coverage is to help you collect money that is owed to you. After talking with them they suggested I give them one more try before we go any further. So, knowing that the attorney was there for me I called a friend that still worked there and had her get me the name and extension of the person in charge of human resources.

I called and got their voice mail. I thought great here we go again. I left a message anyway. The next day the person in HR that I tried to contact before gave me a call. I explained the situation to her. She told me there was a problem and that she would get it straightened out.

A week later I got my vacation pay. I wonder how many of you would have contacted an attorney to get $300.00 owed to you?

Even though the attorney did not get directly involved by that point, just knowing that I had someone to help me through the process gave me enough courage to contact the person I needed to contact to get the situation resolved.

Ok, that check paid for a years membership – break even. However, with some of the other things my girlfriend and I came out ahead.