A 19-year-old woman in Taiwan who worked at a beverage store received her final salary of NT$6,972 (RM1,030) in coins of different values after a dispute with her boss.
Known as Liu, she said her boss gave her a plastic bag full of coins as her last pay after she decided to quit, as reported by the South China Morning Post.
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Liu allegedly kept skipping work
According to EBC News, the salary was made up of NT$1, NT$5, and NT$10 coins, and it took Liu nearly an hour to deposit them at the bank.
“I even noticed NT$20 was missing. When I brought it up, my boss just joked to the others, saying that ‘There’s a beggar here, give her NT$20,'” Liu said.
The employer defended the move, saying it was meant as “shock education,” and claimed it was a response to Liu’s alleged bad attitude towards her colleagues and her repeated absences from work.
“I told her that when you’re working, you need to respect others and communicate properly. But she just brushed it off, saying she was grumpy because she had just woken up,” the employer said.
The employer offered to exchange the coins for an apology
The employer also accused Liu of borrowing part of her salary after just a month of working and claimed she had been absent for 3 days without notice.
She added that she’d offered to swap the coins for banknotes if Liu apologised, but Liu turned down the offer.
In an interview with TVBS News, Li Xuanchang, the commissioner of the Occupational Safety and Health Department at Tainan City’s Labour Affairs Bureau, said that since the employer paid the full amount on time, there was technically no violation of labour laws.
That said, he still described the incident as both inconsiderate and unethical.
Do you think the employer’s actions were justifiable? Let us know in the comments!
