I did not make a speech or tell him off, though I had earned the right to.

I simply thanked him, collected the back-pay I was owed, and walked out the front doors of that restaurant and into a completely different life than the one I had walked in with.

But I want to be honest about something, because it matters to the rest of this story.

As I walked out, I was not thinking only about my own escape.

I was thinking about all the other people, in that restaurant and in a thousand restaurants like it, who did not have a mysterious binder and a long-lost uncle coming to rescue them.