Comments on: Forced to resign for refusing to take a break 4 minutes into the shift

By: Evil HR Lady

Evil HR Lady — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 19:14:33 +0000

In reply to Anonymous. Yes, this is true, but unscrupulous businesses force people to sign letters of resignation and then submit that as proof of an employee initiated termination. I've seen it happen far too often to trust any business that wants you to "resign" without severance or other benefits a guarantee not to oppose severance.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 17 Mar 2015 18:53:52 +0000

In reply to Jon Rehm. I am not a lawyer, but oversee HR and just worked with an employment lawyer to create a severance agreement with an employee who was asked to resign. I am in California, and the lawyer said essentially the same thing: The issue of the termination is determined by which party moved to end the relationship, regardless of the label applied to the termination.

By: Jon Rehm

Jon Rehm — Mon, 16 Mar 2015 21:26:18 +0000

I am an employment lawyer and I believe a resignation doesn’t necessarily mean you will lose your unemployment claim. In my state, Nebraska, the issue of quit or termination is determined by who initiated the separation of employment. A lawyer should be able to elicit testimony from the employer about the initiation of the separation of employment in an unemployment appeal. In my experience you can usually get that testimony in a hearing. So long as you can show termination instead of quit, then in my state the burden is on the employer to show misconduct in connection with employment. Most times management and or their outsourced hearing officers can not meet this burden and the employee ends up getting unemployment.

By: Horse tense

Horse tense — Wed, 04 Mar 2015 03:31:39 +0000

In reply to Evil HR Lady.

Ha! I am not suprised.

Just for the record, the last three questions were rhetorical… I know no one would spill if they thought there was a danger they thought be identified by other readers, myself included!

Besides the intrigue is half the fun!

By: Horse tense

Horse tense — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 23:32:26 +0000

In reply to Daniel.

I try to read these letters at face value and keep it at that, because there is no way of knowing what information is missing, or what nuance was overlooked along the way.

I think advice columnists really do have to dole out advice with the caveat: “if it happened like you say it did, then…”

Granted many of these columns (Evil HR Lady’s and others) would be exceedingly short if they didn’t try to fill in some of the blanks. We can speculate, but there is just never a way what exactly those blanks are.

By: DMC

DMC — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 21:35:35 +0000

I am in California, and while there are rules regarding the law and rest breaks should wherever practicable be in the middle of the four hour period, this may or may not violate the law. I don’t know if this is the ONLY break the person gets, whether this was a paid rest or unpaid lunch break, how long the shift is, etc. There’s nothing prohibiting an employer from making an employer take an early break if the other conditions are satisfied. Though, I agree it’s stupid to fire someone (and, frankly, not terribly smart of an employee to outright refuse). The best thing for an employee to do if he or she feels meal and rest breaks are being violated is to, in this case, follow the instructions and then ask questions or, if necessary, file a complaint afterward. Refusal is technically insubordination unless what the employee is being asked to do is actually illegal or unsafe.

By: Stells

Stells — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 18:03:29 +0000

In reply to Stells. NOT that this excuses the rest of the atrocious behavior on the part of the manager - just pointing out that in certain environments this type of request isn't as crazy and uncommon as it sounds.

By: Stells

Stells — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 18:00:50 +0000

Given that this is an airline, I would be willing to bet the “forced” break had more to do with a CBA than any law. When I worked in HR for a union facility, there were things of this sort that always ended up happening because employees had to be guaranteed at least one 15 min break before (and one after) their lunch break, and that coupled with state ratio requirements and various scheduling nightmares – usually a handful of people calling in or leaving early during bad weather days or during flu season – the whole schedule would have to be reworked at the last minute resulting situations where employees had to take a break way too early in their shift, but it was that or no break, which wasn’t acceptable under the CBA.

By: Evil HR Lady

Evil HR Lady — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 17:30:18 +0000

In reply to Daniel. Sure, there's more than meets the eye. Usually the letter writers will reveal far more about themselves than they think they are revealing. But, this was written by a friend without any extraneous info, so I just had to take it at face value. While there are plenty of rotten employees out there, there are also plenty of rotten managers.

By: Daniel

Daniel — Tue, 03 Mar 2015 16:23:12 +0000

Rarely is anything ever so clear cut. There are a host of questions I would like to ask. But working backwards, the person was “forced” to resign. As you said, forced to resign is a “nice” way of being fired. But why? Just because the person refused to take a break so early? Bad manager? Maybe. Bad employee? Maybe.
There is more than meets the eye here. It’s stupid to fire someone over a break 4 minutes in to a shift and sounds like pretext to me. But is it a thing where the employee had not been compliant with other things? Was this the final incident? If so, bad on the manager because I can guan-damn-tee you that the manager was ready to fire the day before but decided to find one more thing to use as the final incident.
The other thing I would like to know is what kind of run ins has this employee had with the manager and/or others? There are pieces to the puzzle that are missing.