Here it is somewhat normal to "forget" so that you have to ask for it every time. My current employer has thousands of employees. "Forgetting" is good business. If money is tight they have people ask twice. You get a response like, didnt you already report this? Surely someone is working on it?

Can’t speak for every place but that’s not always an option. As a teenager, I worked at Sports Direct where the management would regularly work us after our allotted hours and bar us putting the extra time onto our timesheet. If I recall correctly, the company eventually got pulled for it but the money they’d have saved over years would have outweighed the fine.

The timesheets were on paper so good luck putting your real hours on without your manager, who files it, finding out.

I’d be amazed if they ever cleaned up their act.

Yes and: IIRC, the USA has at least $8b of wage theft per year.

Report that shit to your local Department of Labor equivalent. They would have gotten you, and everyone else in that store, their owed money.

You’re asking children to have full understanding of their rights and how to enforce them. Also, investigations into this started in 2020: over a decade after I left. Do you think nobody had reported this in all that time? Looks like the system wasn’t working as well as you think it does.