Joe Harker
Someone who ended up on a relatively quiet shift in a hospitality job and decided to pass some time on their phone got a rude awakening when they checked their payslip.
Sometimes, you just get slow days where there's not many people to attend to, and in those cases, would anyone begrudge you a little browse of the phone so you could have a quick look through a fine selection of interesting articles?
You'd think not, but one poor soul over in Australia got an unwelcome surprise when they looked at their pay for a shift and found out more than half of it wouldn't be going their way.
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Taking to Reddit to post about their predicament, the worker explained that when they checked their payslip, they discovered that they'd been docked pay for five of the nine hours they worked.
While they would have earned $535 AUS (£306) for the nine hour shift under normal circumstances, they found they'd lost out on almost $300 AUS (171).
The reason given on the payslip was 'deduction for over 5 hours on mobile phone during shift (unauthorised)'.
The hospitality worker also said that they'd only been on their phone during the times when there had been no customers to attend to and wanted to know if it was legal for their employer to dock their pay like this.
And the internet's answer came back as a resounding 'nope', with plenty of people saying the most they could do was hand out a warning for being on the phone or cut down their hours in the future, not dock money on their payslip.
Someone else said the company would need a 'signed authorisation form' to dock pay and said it was 'definitely not legal' to just tell a staff member they wouldn't be getting as much as they thought.
And another person claiming to be a senior payroll officer said the whole thing was '100% illegal' and suggested contacting the Fair Work Ombudsman.
The worker then explained that they'd since left that job, but wanted to know if there was a pretty hefty sum of money they were entitled to which had been taken from them.
They said: "I will definitely fight for this $300 is a lot for me.”
According to Fair Work Ombudsman, there are 'limited situations' where an employer can deduct money from an employees pay, but in most circumstances, it is not allowed.
Some of situations were it is acceptable are if the employee 'agrees in writing and it's principally for their benefit', it's 'allowed by law, court order or the Fair Work Commission', or it's allowed under an employee's registered agreement.
However, they also state that any written agreement must be genuine and money cannot be deducted if it 'benefits the employer indirectly or directly'.