Urban Flats employees want their money

Several employees at a pair of Urban Flats restaurants are wondering when they're going to get paid for their work.

Employees from the now closed store in Tinseltown and the new store in Jacksonville Beach contacted WOKV, saying they are owed paychecks.

“So we just want to be done,” said Sherry Goldberg.

“We don’t want to deal with these people any more than they want to deal with us.”

Sherry Goldberg told me she quit working at the Tinseltown Urban Flats just before it closed.  She said they owe her $230.  When she estimated how much they owe the other employees she knows, she said the total comes in at around $3,000.

She said back in May, one of her paychecks bounced.  She was reimbursed for it, but she still wasn’t happy with how things were being handled.

“Instead of walking out with the cash and tips you made that night, they were writing it down on an I.O.U. sheet,” Goldberg said.  “And then nobody was really keeping track of it.  It was like scribbled down.”

She said they didn't tell any of the workers that they were closing down the Tinseltown store.

“You showed up for work one day, the doors were locked and the landlord was there…and you know you lost your job.”

According to Goldberg, the night before it happened they came with a U-Haul truck and “took property that didn’t belong to them.  It belonged to the landlord for, you know, owed money.”

Goldberg said they took TVs, patio furniture, tables, and liquor which was under the license of the Tinseltown store and moved it to the Jacksonville Beach store.

Chelsea Parks also worked at the Tinseltown location.  She said her second-to-last paycheck was declined, and she still hasn’t received her last paycheck.

Parks said when she asked her manager Tony Ewonaitis why she wasn’t getting paid, he said, “I don’t know what to tell you.”

Jeremiah Hersey told WOKV that he is still currently an employee at the new Jacksonville Beach location.  He works 30 hours a week, and he hasn’t seen a paycheck since August 3.

Hersey says the restaurant owes him around $800.

“I mean they’re telling me, ‘Oh we don’t have the money to pay you,’” he said.

I left messages for Tony Ewonaitis who is now the owner of the Urban Flats in Jacksonville Beach.  I also left a message for Lori Shew, whom the employees tell me is in charge of paying them.  Neither returned my call.