If You Own A Small Business, Have Enough Company Shirts Or Pay A Fine

An Albany area Papa John’s franchise owner has been fined for more than $5,500 dollars.

It’s not because he didn’t pay taxes or had health violations because his store was unsanitary, it was because he didn’t have enough company shirts for his employees.

From a story in the Times Union, Christian King operates several gas stations, convenience stores and Papa John’s Pizza shops in the Albany area. They’re all part of King’s KNC Holdings.

He’s facing the fine for not providing enough company polo shirts to his employees. This also applied to his drivers that only work a day or two a week. Apparently there’s a New York State law that states if your company supplies employees with a uniform (or in this case a shirt), then you need to supply one for every day that they work. If someone works for five days, then they need five shirts, even if it’s only for working a couple of hours a day.

Some staff from the N.Y.S. Department Of Labor did an audit over a couple of days, last year, at King’s pizza businesses. Everything seemed fine, and even his record keeping was very exceptional. It was the lack of shirts that got him into trouble.

This situation caught the attention of Assemblyman Bob Reilly, who said that this is “disproportionate fine against King, and what should happen when you make a judgment is not that there is a fine but a correction and that failing to hand out enough polo shirts is hardly a serious crime.”

If King tries to appeal the fine, he was told that this could possibly take years to resolve and there would also be interest added to the fine. I feel bad for Mr. King. I would think that the employees washed their shirts after they wore them every time. Although, having a shirt for every day that you work isn't really a bad idea, but I don't really see the need for a fine of that amount. I wonder why there are so many people that don’t want to start up a small business.