The owner of this store, Ahmad Al-Hawarri, does not pay taxes. He pays his employees in cash. He does not take taxes out of their pay. He does not give out W-2s or 1090s at the end of the year, so his employees have no way of knowing how much money they made over the course of the year to pay their taxes. He does not keep employment files for his employees. The job gives no benefits whatsoever. He does not pay unemployment, FICA, Social Security, Medicare, nothing. He does not pay overtime. He also owns The Loon Grocery at 2501 Lyndale Ave South and the store at Pen and Glenwood over in North Minneapolis. He does not pay taxes at those places either. His name is Ahmad Al-Hawarri and his phone number is 763-439-9611. He is too much of a p*ssy to fire people himself, so he brings in his friends who are a-holes to manage the stores for him and then they find ridiculous reasons to fire the people who have diligently worked there for years and years. This ranges from mental abuse, name calling, saying they're doing a horrible job when they are actually doing a very good job, completely making up lies, cutting their hours so much that they can barely survive so they quit and find a better job (thus they don't have to pay unemployment), taking away any and all privileges (what little they had to begin with), and just pushing them to the point where they get so pissed off they want to scream at them, but if they do, they'll fire them. That's what they want - a reason to fire them so they can bring in their worthless buddies. The new manager who Ahmad hired to clean house at the Loon Express did exactly this. His name is Fayez and his phone number is 651-900-4299. He fired the girl who worked there for 4 years and who's only offense was to call him and tell him that she was 4 dollars and 50 cents short in her pay. He made up some story about her giving him attitude, but she completely denies this and says that she spoke calmly and kept saying, "It's not a big deal." over and over. But 10 minutes later he showed up and fired her. Then there was a guy who always wore a hat that worked the mornings. He worked there for 7 years. He opened the store for 3 years, 6am-3pm, Monday-Friday, by himself, with no breaks, no lunch. He was checking people in, writing checks, doing inventory, and running the day-to-day operations of the place. When Ahmad brought in this Fayez guy the first thing Fayez did was put the morning guy on nights. Then he cut his hours, yelled at him every chance he got, and cut his hours more. When the girl who got fired for saying her pay was short 4 dollars and 50 cents left, Fayez brought in his fat buddy, paid him 10 bucks an hour (which was more than the girl, the guy with the hat and the southern guy made) and gave him 51 hours his first week, just to rub it in the other employees' faces. The guy Fayez hired knew absolutely nothing about doing the job (he didn't even know how to do lottery!) As time went on, it was as if Fayez had a personal vendetta against the guy with the hat: he pushed him, made up lies and stories about him, told him he did a terrible job on dayshift and that's why he had to come in and take over (if he did such a terrible job, why didn't Ahmad fire him? he had 3 years to do so...), and generally made life hell for him. But the guy with the hat didn't quit. Finally, Fayez just made up another lie and fired him, saying he "wasn't doing enough work." Now, there was a closing list that had to be done every night, general cleaning, stocking, etc., but that wasn't enough for Fayez, so he added more stuff to the list. The guy with the hat did half of the list when he worked with the other long-time employee, the guy from the south, and did 75% of the list when he worked with the new guy who didn't know how to do the job (but still got paid 10 bucks an hour for his ignorance.) If he "wasn't doing enough work", why not fire the other employees who were doing an equal amount of work or less? The same thing happened at the Loon Grocery, Ahmad brought in a new manager who made up lies and changed the schedule on people so he had a reason to fire all the long time employees and bring in his friends. Now nobody wants to shop there, and the same thing is becoming true of the Loon Express as well. Fayez works every morning from 6am to 4pm (7am to 5pm saturday and sunday), 7 days a week. Call the store at 612-870-2787 or go in and ask him why they don't pay taxes and why they had to fire all the employees who actually did a great job and hire his friends who do a horrible job. Don't expect a truthful answer, everything that comes out of Fayez's mouth is a complete lie (and not just the employees can attest to this, many of the customers have said the same thing.) The management (Ahmad and Fayez) also hate black people (repeatedly referring to them as "n*ggers" and never hiring them for vacant positions) and gay people ("f*ggot" was a common word used.) read more
