About rippedoffworker
rippedoffworker is a tool for keeping a record.
If you think you’re being underpaid, or treated badly at work, the hardest part usually isn’t knowing something is wrong. It’s being able to show it. Memory fades, texts get deleted, schedules change, and months later you’re left saying “I’m pretty sure I worked more hours than they paid me for” — which is not the same thing as being able to demonstrate it.
This site exists to close that gap. You enter what you actually worked and what you were actually paid, week by week, and you end up with a dated record that builds over time.
What this is
A private record-keeping tool for workers in the United States, covering the four main ways people get paid: hourly, salaried, gig and contract work, and commission.
You can use it to log:
- Hours you worked against hours you were paid for
- Overtime that wasn’t paid at the right rate
- Breaks you worked through
- Deductions taken out of your pay
- Expenses you covered out of your own pocket
- Mistreatment and retaliation at work, with dates
You can start for free and see your own numbers before you decide whether to keep anything.
What this is not
We want to be blunt about this, because it matters.
This is not a law firm and we do not give legal advice. We can’t tell you whether you have a case, what you’re legally entitled to, or what you should do next. Nobody here is your lawyer.
We don’t contact your employer. There is no part of this tool that notifies, contacts or involves the company you work for. That isn’t a policy we could change quietly — there is simply no mechanism in the product to do it.
We don’t promise you’ll get paid. We can’t. What we can do is help you build a clear, dated record of what happened — the kind of thing the Department of Labor, a union, or a lawyer will ask to see if you ever take it further.
We’re not a crisis service. If you’re in an unsafe situation at work, or things are affecting your health, please speak to someone who can actually help — a doctor, a counsellor, your local labor agency, or a trusted person. Our guides point to those places on purpose.
Who builds this
rippedoffworker is built by David Shelton, through Highfield Digital, Inc., a US company based in Austin, Texas, that builds record-keeping tools for people and small businesses.
The background is not employment law — it’s thirty years in business. Over and over, the same thing decided how a disagreement went. Two people could be in exactly the same position, and the one with photos, dates and notes got taken seriously. The one with a good memory and a strong sense of unfairness often didn’t.
Workers being underpaid are in the same position, with less support and a lot more to lose. That’s the whole reason this exists.
We’re not a big company. There’s no call center and no investors. If you email us, you’re emailing us.
How the numbers work
Every figure this tool shows you comes from something you typed in. We don’t estimate on your behalf, we don’t pull in averages, and we don’t invent anything.
If you enter that you worked 48 hours and were paid for 40 at $18 an hour, the tool works out what those 8 hours come to. That’s arithmetic on your own numbers, and you can check it.
A few things we’re careful about:
- Amounts are shown as ranges and estimates, never as a figure you’re owed. Whether money is legally owed depends on facts we don’t have and on law we can’t apply to your situation.
- Overtime is worked out from your own agreement, not from a rule we picked. You tell us whether you get it, after how many hours, whether that’s a day or a week, and what it’s meant to be paid at — and nothing is counted as overtime until you do. We don’t fill any of it in for you, because the answer is different for different people and a guess would be a figure you never gave us.
- Where the law varies by state or city, we point you to the official source rather than telling you the answer. Minimum wages and deadlines change, and a stale figure on our page could cost you.
If a number here doesn’t match what you expect, trust your own records over our estimate and check with the enforcing agency in your state.
Your information
Your record is yours.
- We never share your record or your details with your employer. See above — there’s no mechanism to.
- We don’t sell your information to anyone, for any purpose.
- You can export everything you’ve entered at any time, in a readable format.
- You can delete your account and your data.
- If you build a record for free and never come back, we delete it after 180 days rather than keeping it indefinitely. Once you’ve unlocked your record, it isn’t deleted on a timer.
The full detail is in our Privacy Policy.
What it costs
You can build your record and see your own numbers for free.
Keeping it long-term is a one-time payment of $59. Not a subscription, not a monthly fee, and it doesn’t renew.
Getting in touch
We reply to everything, usually within two business days. Reaching out to us is private and does not involve your employer in any way.