Mass. convenience store accused of housing employee in walk-in cooler in lieu of paycheck
Published 9:37 am Sunday, November 8, 2015
- A convenience store in Peabody, Massachusetts and its president Azhar Ali have been fined $43,000 by the state's Attorney General's office after an investigation determined the business was at one point paying an employee in part by letting the person take up residence in a walk-in cooler.
PEABODY, Mass. – There are some jobs that include housing.
Ad Market Inc., doing business as Peabody Market, and Azhar Ali of Swampscott, Massachusetts, were ordered to pay the former worker $32,000 in restitution for unpaid wages and overtime.
The business and its owner were also ordered to pay penalties totaling $11,400, including $5,000 for failing to keep accurate payroll records, for a total of $43,400.
“This business repeatedly took advantage of an employee by failing to pay him the hard-earned money he was owed in exchange for providing temporary living accommodations in a broken walk-in cooler,” Attorney General Maura Healey said in a press release Thursday.
An investigation into Peabody Market began in May 2014, following a complaint from a former employee, according to Healey.
Her office determined that from August 2012 to March 2014, the person worked as a clerk at the store. And instead of paying the minimum wage required by law, the store gave the clerk temporary housing in the cooler for most of the time he worked there.
Investigators found the man often worked more than 100 hours a week, but was only sporadically paid for these hours, according to Healey’s office. They also discovered the market failed to keep accurate payroll records as well.
Peabody officials were surprised by the news.
Sharon Cameron, the city’s public health director, said that had an inspector seen evidence someone was living in the store, the business would have been written up by the inspector.
“That’s absolutely something we would have written up,” she said. “That’s unfortunate that somebody would have been in a position like that.”
Cameron said inspectors sometimes discover evidence that someone is “napping” in a store and order the owner to remove all bedding, but she’s not aware of someone ever actually living inside a cooler.
The store was recently inspected, on Aug. 18, for a permit to operate a food establishment and to sell tobacco, Cameron said. The inspection came as a result of a change in ownership from Ali to a Brijesh Patel, according to Cameron’s file.
About two weeks earlier, on Aug. 6, an inspector had noted food was being stored in a bathroom and the refrigerator was not holding a proper temperature, requiring food to be discarded, Cameron said. The store had other violations in July and October 2014, which were addressed.
City records show the store was inspected on March 26, 2014, as part of the process of obtaining a permit to begin operating a deli inside the store, Cameron said. During that inspection, a refrigerator behind the deli counter was described as “not operational at this time,” she said. That issue was addressed, the records show.
A man who identified himself as the store manager on Thursday, Jigar Patel, said the business had recently been purchased from Ali. “He sold the business to us,” said Patel. “We aren’t responsible in any way.”
The City Clerk’s office said there is no current business certificate for the store on file; the most recent one, issued to Ali, expired in January.
The building inspector also said there has been no new occupancy permit issued for the store since 2011.
Dustin Luca and Julie Manganis write for the Salem (Massachusetts) News.
