I just lost 3 days of pay at me new job because of the State

[Pilot_MKN]

After moving back to my hometown and switching colleges, I found a job to help pay for school. After the first day of orientation, HR comes to me and says my fingerprint scan turned up something on my criminal record and that I was not allowed back to work until I received a copy of my rap sheet from the state. This was Tuesday morning. I didn't get my rap sheet til Thursday afternoon. What was the horrible, deadly crime I committed? I'll share:

A few years ago I was driving home from the college I used to go to. The drive is on a 4 lane highway thats flat, and nearly straight as an arrow. The speed limit is 70 and I was doing 80 with very few cars on the road, I was not endangering anyone. A trooper that was coming from the opposite direction flicked on his blue lights as soon as he passed me and pulled a u-turn in the median and I 'knew' he was coming for me. So I get pulled over and he comes up to my window and skips all the usual bullshit and just declares "You were doing 80 in a 70 and had no seatbelt on, give me your license!". I was, in fact, wearing a seatbelt and there was no way he could tell whether I had one on or not from the opposite lane of a 4 lane divided highway, but I was scared and didn't argue the point.

The very next day, I called the number on the back of the ticket for directions and grabbed a checkbook out of my closet and sent it off. Here's where I messed up: the checkbook was from a bank account that I no longer use. The checks are identical to the checks from my new student bank account. I never write checks, I mean, we have debit cards now, there's no need to write checks anymore, so I didn't pay much attention to the numbers on the check (my bad, I know).

It was a really busy semester at school, and I was in the middle of getting my instrument pilots license so I quickly forgot about this incident and considered it 'taken care of'. I never received a receipt from the state or any notification AT ALL that I had accidentally written a bad check.  Four months later, in the middle of my summer vacation, my mother runs into my room with a letter from the state saying that there is a warrant for my arrest and my license has been suspended. She freaks out and tells me to throw on shoes and rush to the sheriff's office (always get a lawyer first. Never go to the cops). To make a long story short, I got thrown in jail until my mother could drive the two hours to the town where the ticket was written and pay their ransom money. Supposedly this was taken off my record, but I was wrong. The piece of paper I got from the state says that I was 'arrested but not convicted of writing a bad check to a government agency'. Why should that disqualify me for a minimum wage job?

[davann]

Welcome to the police state.

[Pilot_MKN]

UPDATE:

I just went to my employer with my state-issued rap sheet and their HR guy told me it looks "fishy" that it says I was "arrested but not convicted" and told me to go get it taken off my record before coming back to work. I'm meeting with a lawyer today to get this taken care of. This nonsense has cost me a WEEKS pay and now legal fees.

[ForumTroll]

Weeks? It's probably gonna take months to get something like that done. I would think it has to at least go before a judge.

[Pilot_MKN]

UPDATE

I followed my lawyers advice and drove an hour to the town where the ticket was from to request documents related to my "crime" and to fill out a form to petition the judge to get the charges dropped against me.

First of all, the lazy bureaucrat in this justice clerk office couldn't even be bothered to GET OFF HER ASS and come to the window to talk to me. She yelled at the window from across the room, over three other bureaucrats whose desks were between the window and her desk. It was five dollars for a photocopy of an 'abstract' where some judge declared me guilty in my absence even though they listed my address as a house i hadn't lived at in over 5 years at the time of my speeding ticket. When I asked about the forms to petition the judge, this tax feeder told me that their county  doesn't have a form and you have to draft one up yourself and their office can not give you any advice on what is supposed to go into that form (and it will be $50 please).

I decided to pay my lawyer to draft it up for me. Better safe than sorry.

Oh, and some interesting prices listed on their wall at the justice clerk's office:

FAILURE TO DIM HEADLIGHTS: $200

FIRST OFFENSE FOR POSSESSION OF MARIJUANA: $280

[miamiballoonguy]

Zero Tolerance.  And it's only going to get worse.

[Bill Brasky]

Sounds like the people you want to work for are a bunch of prim tightasses. 

Get a job roofing.  It'll make a man out of ya, and they pretty much expect you to have a few bodies buried out in the desert. 

[Pilot_MKN]

Sounds like the people you want to work for are a bunch of prim tightasses. 

Get a job roofing.  It'll make a man out of ya, and they pretty much expect you to have a few bodies buried out in the desert. 

Its the local hospital, and Mississippi state law is preventing me from working. The department of health actually halted my employment over this and sent me a copy of my rap sheet saying I have to take care of this.

[Bill Brasky]

Sounds like the people you want to work for are a bunch of prim tightasses. 

Get a job roofing.  It'll make a man out of ya, and they pretty much expect you to have a few bodies buried out in the desert. 

Its the local hospital, and Mississippi state law is preventing me from working. The department of health actually halted my employment over this and sent me a copy of my rap sheet saying I have to take care of this.

Mississippi state law is preventing you from working there.  Mississippi state law is not preventing you from working.  The Department of Health can go fuck itself.  You don't have to take care of shit, unless you wish to comply with their demands in order to be employed by that hospital, or other institutions that operate under the auspice of the DoH. 

Personally, I would fix the problem, since they've been kind enough to check your background and pinpoint any flaws in your credibility.  But I would find another, less obtrusive source of employment.  I wouldn't want to work for a hospital unless I was getting paid six figures to sneer at underlings, and I could show up stinking of whiskey, sex, and reefer. 

For lower paying jobs, you want to avoid institutions, because they grease the skids with the tallow rendered from your guts, like the pharaohs building the pyramids.  I'd rather stack boxes in the back room at Sears.  Hospitals are the supreme asshole epicenter of the employment universe, nothing else comes within throwing distance. 

[Pilot_MKN]

Thank you for correcting me. They are not keeping me from working, just keeping me from working THERE.

I already got a dose of what you're saying during the two-day initial orientation that was nothing but corporate BS and telling us about all the nice government regulations we would have to comply with.

[ForumTroll]

I'd never work in a hospital, simply because of the permeating aspect of all the disinfectant vapors that end up in the air. God, that shit is awful if you've ever spent more than a few days there.

[Pilot_MKN]

Update:

Well, I think this journey is close to over.

My attorney only charged me $50 to handle the case. He drafted a petition to expunge my record and mailed it to the judge, but I forgot to include the $50 'fee' for the judge to bless me. The court was kind enough to not contact me about this, and when I called them yesterday they told me they had been waiting for a week for me to mail them a check and when I asked about them contacting me that I forgot to pay them they said they had no way to contact me. Bullshit, they had a Next Day Air from UPS with my return address AND phone number on the shipping label.

 I hate the government.

scratch that

I FUCKING hate the government

[Bill Brasky]

Update:

Well, I think this journey is close to over.

My attorney only charged me $50 to handle the case. He drafted a petition to expunge my record and mailed it to the judge, but I forgot to include the $50 'fee' for the judge to bless me. The court was kind enough to not contact me about this, and when I called them yesterday they told me they had been waiting for a week for me to mail them a check and when I asked about them contacting me that I forgot to pay them they said they had no way to contact me. Bullshit, they had a Next Day Air from UPS with my return address AND phone number on the shipping label.

 I hate the government.

scratch that

I FUCKING hate the government

You'll find that when you play fuckaround games with fees, you get fucked around. 

[Pilot_MKN]

In all honesty I never meant to not pay their fees. This whole thing stems from an honest mistake that I made. If there was any compassion at all in this system I would think they could see that. Charge me a late fee or something. But holding a trial in my absence without contacting me and declaring that I plead guilty is just absurd.