I am a little high but what if people proposed with beautiful, intricate knives. Ladies would gather around the table and be like “guess what finally happened!!” And pull this beautiful, intricate dagger out of her purse and all the other ladies would gasp and congratulate her
Because I have a tag for pretty weaponry, some knives I’d accept as proposals follow:
I said yes!
(but, actually, hubby bought me a dive knife when we got married so this works…)
I can 100% get behind this as a new tradition.
Ok but this is amazing becuase knives are dangerous and you can use them to hurt other people but when someone proposes with one it’s symbolic like “yes I love you and trust you so much I’m asking you a very vulnerable question with something you could hurt me with but I know you won’t”
Ok, but if you’re an independent contractor in the US and this happens? Find a lawyer, because you might have just gotten a huge payday.
Your position was just referred to as employment. Independent contractors do not have employers; they do not have employment. Congrats, your contact at this company just provided evidence that you were illegally missclassified.
This contact is claiming that you have set hours you’re obligated to fulfill. Unless a work task can only be done at a set time for practical reasons (i.e. you’re an audio freelancer paid to support a live event that occurs at a particular time and requires a certain amount of pre-show setup), a company cannot set an independent contractor’s work hours. This is further evidence that you were missclassified.
The whole exchange establishes that the company is interpreting an employer-employee relationship rather than expecting a service. Discipline and potential for firing (you cannot fire an independent contractor; no longer purchasing their service is not equivalent) establish that this person views themselves as a manager. Independent contractors cannot have managers.
This one text exchange could:
Get you back pay for the full duration you’ve worked there, to bring you up to the compensation that an employee would have gotten
Get you back compensation for lost benefits that an employee would have gotten
Get you back pay for the additional self-employment taxes the company should have covered
Get the company to pay back taxes to the government
Get the company to hire everyone who performed a similar role, or face further penalties and fines
A win would encourage the rest of their missclassified workers to sue for the same, or give them leverage to demand a better deal
If the company is going to screw you over like that, may as well make them pay for it.
Since this is getting a lot of reblogs, here’s a federal source that can help you determine if you’re illegally classified as a contractor:
You can also file a form with the IRS to force the company to correct your classification (assuming you meet the criteria), without necessarily having to sue:
Keep in mind that this is just federal. Most states also prohibit missclassification as an independent contractor; and even if states have more lenient rules, companies still have to comply with this federal law. The rules have largely been bipartisan and existed for decades, so they’re common.
States also have an interest in having regulations about missclassification: it’s a significant loss of tax revenue. Your self employment tax does not fully equal what a company would have paid for you in payroll taxes.
A lawyer can help point you in the right direction if a company is currently missclassifying you.
Just so you know, whenever we invent yet another fake fandom character, they inadvertently blink into existence, ill-formed and meaningless, only to be trapped within the hellish liminal space created by the zeitgeist of our collective consciousness.
For those who don’t know, this is Joe Lycett. He’s a British comedian who’s also bisexual/pansexual (he uses both labels interchangeably afaik), and this isn’t an isolated thing.
He has a show called Joe Lycett’s Got Your Back which explains consumer rights, exposes dodgy businesses and actually fights on behalf of people who have been scammed by those businesses, often successfully.
He also legally changed his name to Hugo Boss in protest of the fashion house Hugo Boss hitting a local brewery with cease and desist because they trademarked the word boss. The protest was successful and Hugo Boss receded the c&d.
He’s a cool guy and I recommend looking him up. I also recommend looking up the notable cases from JLGYB on the Wikipedia link below
