got fired, final check is short hours and employer won't fix
employment attorney Kentucky Oct 9, 2026
location: Kentucky Some basic info: small business, we use Square, I was terminated and given shallow/false reasoning (KY is at-will, though), my last check is missing at least 7 hours if not more, most of which was supposed to be overtime. The owner is known to not pay people for their labor on time; one employee didnt get paid for a month, another was owed for months of work and quit because of it, my manager was owed thousands at one point, and i think I saw two letters from the dept of labor with two former employee names on it in the past (from what i know the owner did them pretty bad too so i wonder if they filed some form of claim) I worked for a small business for about a year and was terminated for a stated lack of satisfactory work. I could go on about how ridiculous the reasoning was but that is not relevant to my issue at hand. I went to pick up my last check today and was shorted hours; I worked overtime and my former employer stated that they "adjusted my hours" down from 44 hours (her words, i think i had more) down to 37 because she said "nothing got done." This isn't true, I did work on my assigned tasks the entire time; but regardless, I was clocked in for the correct amount of time and she reduced my hours on my final check because she stated she wasn't happy with what did and didn't get done. Our hours are done through square and the app shows me the hours she reduced me down to, not what was actually worked. I confronted her about this and she was very emotionally volatile and refused to fix it and kept showing me "what I was owed" based on her adjustment of my hours and yelled that I "didnt deserve" to be paid for the hours i was clocked in for. She also threatened me with writing a huge letter to unemployment so that it would be denied for me, and threw some personal things in my face at the end; overall a very unprofessional and messy situation. I do intend to call Square and see if I can get my original recorded hours emailed to me so that I have some form of evidence. I intend to look into BBB / dept of labor but this is new territory to me. My main concerns are: -If Square cannot give me my original hours, what can I do? I mostly worked alone and took very few pictures at work but one does show that I was at work past when she adjusted my hours to. -Who do I report this to? -How can I get my unpaid wages? -Since I lost my job I am struggling financially a lot; can I cash the check without it looking bad on my case and still get to dispute the situation later? Thank you for reading all of this, I'm sorry if I left out and details. To my credit, I have been very on top of my paperwork, job applications (I think I've found one since I nailed an interview for a position) and I've done everything clean and well with unemployment, so I'm hoping that can help reflect the type of person I am, if it means anything.
