Reviews & Comments
Dallas, TX
Dallas gets a thumbs down -
12/17/2019I've lived in several cities and Dallas was the first I had a problem with continuous wage theft. Thankfully Texas has a wage theft act and I was able to file complaints with the Texas Wage and Labor Dept and after investigating my paycheck would be cut from the Texas Comptroller out of Austin.
That's the weirdest thing in the world. Looking at your check and it shows 'Texas Comptroller'.
The companies were super slick in how they would do the wage theft. One company in particular signed me up, without my knowledge, for a retirement account. When the company laid us off eventually after losing their contract - I went to pull out the money in the retirement account and ING (now called Voya) told me that I would only get about 25% of what the account held. I was shocked. I asked why. The ING agent said that after ING took its percentage, the administrator also took a percentage and the administrator was taking about 60% of what the account held.
The ING agent said that my company had made itself the administrator and had set it's own fee (something ING allowed them to do) and the agent admitted she had never seen a fee so high.
Reverse wage theft. I filed a claim with the Texas Wage Theft Act and after they investigated they found in my favor and paid me.
But that is not the half of it. I had companies in Dallas continuously attempting to steak from me. I would always fight them by filing complaints. They would quickly ban me in their system.
I had coworkers who would just walk away. From venture paychecks.
I had one male friend who was cheated out of $700 dollars by his employer who kept his entire last check. He was too afraid to report to the Texas Wage Theft because they were 'white people' and blacks in Texas are afraid of whites.
I had another friend, who worked through a staffing agency for a bank. The staffing agency owner, a white woman, wanted more money for the work she was doing. She went behind my friends back to the company and demanded twice the wage (not for my friend but the extra for herself - again my friend did not know this was happening) and this was against the original agreement. The bank decided to simply choose another person from a different agency.
Instead of being honest with my friend, the staffing agency owner lied to her like there was a problem with her performance and they let her go. When my friend called her former manager at the bank the manager told her they liked her and she was doing an excellent job and then she explained what the staffing agency owner did and said that was why they went with a lower cost associate.
This woman kept my friends last paycheck. When I told my friend to go through the Texas Wage Theft office she said she would 'leave it to God' and she had 'moved on'.
Unbelievable.
Dallas was also the only city I had ever lived where my paychecks were often LATE.
I worked through staffing agencies for a few years and I was continuously being banned by them because I would protest so hard when my paycheck would never be paid on time. They would always claim the client was late with the hours.
One client in particular sent me proof where they had faxed my hours multiple times to the staffing agency and showed where the fax had gone through. They had also emailed my hours and showed me proof. The client could not understand why the agency was repeatedly claiming to not have my hours. After the staffing agency found out about my contacting the client they quickly paid me and banned me. All because I wanted my paycheck on time. Texas is one of a few states that allows landlords to evict if you are even one day late, but they allow companies the right to pay an employee up to two weeks late. I called the head of TX workforce in Austin and spoke to the Director. He said that unless my paycheck was 2 weeks late there was nothing I could do because Texas allowed the employees to pay late.
My mom called and told me about a former coworker of hers who had recently moved to Dallas. She said 'you know.. she says her paycheck is always late'. I had never mentioned to my mom what I had experienced but I did that time.
RACISM
Yes. Dallas is very racist. There is something very 1930 about Dallas. The whites live light years better than anyone else. They seem to roll in money. Not every single one. But the vast majority. Dallas has very white firms with no blacks working in them or if they have an african american it may be one or two.
Working as a contractor I worked in many different firms and there were times I saw no other black people. Not one. In a company with hundreds of workers.
I remembered wondering... where do blacks work?
Even now I can go into many establishments in Dallas or in Addison or Plano and see no African Americans at all. Sometimes maybe one.
Where are we?
And yes, South Dallas and places of South of Dallas (Cedar Hill, Desoto, Duncanville, Lancaster) are overwhelmingly black. But so much of other parts of Dallas (with the exception of Arlington and North Dallas which have cheaper, older apartments which are usually second chance) have no blacks at all.
It's weird in 2019 to see parts of a major city like Dallas with no blacks.
And dont get it twisted. Yes Dallas has a black mayor, DA and Police Chief. But they answer to the very white corporate establishment.
The black police chief has looked almost haunted in some of her press conferences. She just looked afraid. She has been reluctant to call out the office racism in certain violent acts in Dallas.
TERRIBLE EXPLOITATION
Companies move to Dallas and start engaging in reprehensible behavior. In every job contract there is a clause that the company can 'assign other job duties as it sees fit'. Well, what I've seen happen is that if you are an exceptionally competent person, the manager will assign all of his or her job duties to you without any additional pay. You will never know you are doing the job of your manager. Or some higher executive. They will simply shirk off their responsibility. So not only are you doing your job, your doing their job too.
PRETENDERS
Someone mentioned about the folks pretending to be rich. A recent report by Experian stated that Dallas County leads Texas and the nation in the number of people 90 days behind on their car notes.
If you drive around Dallas the number of luxury cars and brand new cars and high cost SUV'S jumps out at you. (It could be that many of these folks are working for Jewish Owned car washes that are starting everyone off at $50K a year - pls read the response from the guy from Illinois to get the sarcasm) or these folks are rolling in money.
But them Dallas leads the nation for delinquency in car payments.