While the novel coronavirus has created a lot of uncertainty in the world, employees at a Hometown Buffet restaurant in Burbank were certain their latest paycheck would still be in their bank accounts the next morning — instead they awoke to find the restaurant had reversed the deposits.

Roughly all of the 30 or so employees at the restaurant received messages from their banks saying their March 25 paycheck had been rescinded by the company without explanation.

Stephanie De La Cruz, a shift manager at the restaurant, said she talked to her general and regional managers to get answers. They assured her that the problem would work itself out in a few days and they’d see the money return.

More than two weeks later, the employees have yet to be paid.

About a dozen employees staged a protest on Wednesday in front of the restaurant in the Empire Center, demanding their money.

The employees have been given false promises from the company and that “everyone’s telling a different story,” De La Cruz said.

“I want answers for my employees because it looks like they have no respect for us and are leaving us to fend for ourselves,” she added. “The company should be taking care of us.”

Employees at the Hometown Buffet in Burbank staged a protest on Wednesday after the company rescinded their March 25 paychecks without notice. (Raul Roa/Burbank Leader)

The Burbank restaurant was not the only Hometown Buffet to experience pay issues, with several other locations in Southern California reporting similar problems, according to employees at the protest.

A representative for Hometown Buffet said in an email the company was aware of the pay situation and is working to fix it as soon as possible.

“In these troubled times, there are errors and mishaps happening at many levels, including the banking system,” according to the representative.

The restaurant has temporarily closed all of its locations since March 22 in response to the coronavirus outbreak.

Hometown Buffet is owned by Texas-based Food Management Partners, which was in the news recently after another restaurant chain it owns — Curry House — permanently closed all its locations suddenly, leaving many of those employees in the lurch.

In an internal email from Food Management Partners’ payroll department and shared by several Hometown Buffet employees, the reason the company gave for the paychecks being rescinded was because government officials “made a call that impacts all of us and the assistance that they told companies they would get, has not come through.”

The assistance mentioned in the email alluded to the $2-trillion coronavirus stimulus package President Donald Trump signed last month that earmarked $500 billion in loans to struggling businesses and another $377 billion in loans and grants for small businesses.

Food Management Partners was working on securing alternative funding in order to pay employees, according to the internal email.

However, the company’s assurances haven’t been enough to ease the anxiety of employees like Mary Arev, who worked at the Burbank location.

“Some of my co-workers haven’t been able to pay their rent and they live day-by-day waiting for their paycheck, but it’s never there,” she said.

Because of the pay issue, Arev said she resorted to working for Instacart in order to make ends meet.

She also mentioned the employees have met with several lawyers to see what options they have in order to get their pay, but no action has been taken yet.

“We just want our money back,” she said. “Those hours were worked, we put in the time, so it’s ridiculous that they’re not paying us.”

Times Community News photographer Raul Roa contributed to this story.

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