Austin small claims court denies $80 wage claim over disputed closing shift

An Austin small claims court denied Nora Bell's request for $80 in wages from Cedar Finch Gifts LLC, finding that she had not proved she worked a four-hour closing shift on April 12. The court entered judgment for the company and ordered no payment.

The dispute turned on a gap between accepting a shift and proving it was worked. Bell said she forgot to clock in but completed the shift; Cedar Finch said its manager believed she had canceled.

The judge found that messages reliably established Bell had agreed to cover the 5 p.m. to 9 p.m. shift, but did not show whether she attended. A time-clock report contained no entry for her that day, which weighed against her claim without proving she was absent: the report could not capture an unrecorded shift.

An April 12 closing checklist bore the initials “NB” beside closing tasks. The judge considered it relevant, but its author was unverified and it had no completion time. Bell's account that she wrote the initials was evidence, but the checklist did not independently establish that she completed the shift.

Bell's account, the accepted shift and the checklist made her claim plausible, the judge said, but the evidence left attendance uncertain. Because Bell bore the burden of proving her claim, the court concluded that the work and wages underlying the requested award had not been established.

The judge gave little weight to the manager's belief that Bell canceled: there was no cancellation message or stated basis for the recollection. The court made no finding that she canceled, and did not treat the absence of a pay record as proof that Cedar Finch had paid her.

Bell said she accepted the shift, worked it and initialed the checklist. She argued that the missing clock entry did not settle whether she was present, while acknowledging that the texts alone did not prove she completed the shift and that she had no separate record or witness to confirm it.

Cedar Finch asked the court to deny the claim, pointing to the missing clock entry, the untimed and unverified initials, and the absence of a witness or camera record confirming Bell's presence. It also relied on the manager's belief that Bell had canceled.

Cedar Finch had asked Bell to cover the April 12 shift, and the company said it paid her for every recorded hour. The record supplies no year for the shift.

The judgment leaves the underlying attendance question unresolved: it does not find that Bell failed to work or that she canceled. It decides only that the available evidence did not establish the work and unpaid wages needed for her $80 claim.