Are trial shifts even a legal thing?

I swear to god, if I do another unpaid trial shift with a business and I'm not hired, I'll end up burning the place down. (Not a real threat)

Is it even a legal thing? From my experience and what I hear from people, business owners are actually exploiting this to get free labour every now and then.

And the poor unemployed individual would put in as much effort as they can to impress the owner during the "trial." It happened with me several times, and I'm shocked to hear the same from others.

I'm honestly sooooooo pissed, that I might fight one of those businesses online. (We all know how much they'd lose in this)

Last place, I worked for four hours; did the best I could and even offered to do more tasks. The fking asshole told me they would call and let me know (he literally said "I don't usually say it right away, but we're happy with you. You probably have a job here. I just have to check the hours and see where you fit.) I went by later, since no one called. He told me some bullshit concerning their owner... and said he would give me a yes or a no the next day. They didn't even bother to reach out with a refusal msg.

The government makes it super hard to get something legal going in regards to this. They advise to handle it with the owner yourself.

If I go there to the last place, and that's an actual threat, I might end up punching the guy. That's why I didn't put myself in that situation.

Are they allowed to do this???

Gotta tip the balance of power in your favour. IM and online work means you don't have to do unpaid trial work for anyone.

Usually a trial period is acceptable but you gotta get paid for the hours you put it.

they are allowed, next time you see this, just walk away. Your are smarter now, no reason to waste your time on them

What sort of work was it?

VSYNC said:

Gotta tip the balance of power in your favour. IM and online work means you don't have to do unpaid trial work for anyone.

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Screw capitalism, man, if you don't have the capital.

CryptMedia said:

Usually a trial period is acceptable but you gotta get paid for the hours you put it.

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Nope. According to legal resources in the uk, a business owner has to pay you only IF the work you're doing is "unsupervised," or if they're assessing your skills over several shifts/days. Nothing is mentioned in regards to a single trial shift. They owner could always say whatever you did was supervised.

ChillerNiller said:

they are allowed, next time you see this, just walk away. Your are smarter now, no reason to waste your time on them

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That's it.

I'm not going to, really. But there's another business that I'll most definitely destroy their online presence when I have the time, even if I pay for resources. They owe me money (legally) and I'm pretty sure I can't do anything about it.

It's a bit touristy where I live, and I can see businesses actually utilizing this in weekends. It is really sickening; and fk the government for making it super difficult to report something like that.

UninvitedSoul said:

Screw capitalism, man, if you don't have the capital.

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Plenty of people start with nothing and work their asses off until they have capital mate. Everyone can't win the game of life, it might seem unfair but it's actually infinitely more fair than everyone being given free shit whether they work for it or not.. otherwise why even bother working hard?

You'll do well mate.. just avoid doing any more unpaid trials. You're got a good command of the English language by the looks of it - start writing content.. work for yourself and f**k slaving yourself out to douchebags for free anymore.

It's like workers who get switched onto zero hours contracts etc, they really do get screwed by employers.

This is probably illegal in certain (most western?)countries (I two of the European countries I live in it def. is illegal) but there are so many places where workers have few rights at least comparing to the business owners... Sorry you had to go through it

Next time, ignore.

Let alone working for a few hours, I won't even seat for a machine test. If you need to see how I work before you hire me, you can fuck off. I have a lot more offers.