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I read it and still don't really understand why there was no one administrating the system. Who could have stopped the system (with the appropriate emails to co

I read it and still don't really understand why there was no one administrating the system. Who could have stopped the system (with the appropriate emails to cover their ass). I also do not understand why a check couldn't be cut. Submit to accounts payable with an email approval?

MBCook 8y ago
That’s what I was thinking. If you had a contract and your manager was saying you were supposed to be working… Why not sue for the three weeks of pay that they illegitimately kept you from earning?
- madeofpalk 8y ago
  Because lawsuits are hard? Seeing a "why not sue" as a response is very "typical American" for outsiders.
  - MBCook 8y ago
    Yeah. It’s what I was thinking throughout most of the article, assuming that the end would be “I lost my job and there was nothing I could do about it“. It’s not like it was a three day thing, I could sort of understand that. Since they are a contractor, it also seems like perhaps the company that they are actually employed with should be paying them for the contract company’s screwup. That would also probably heavily incentivize the company they actually work for to put pressure on the contractee to fix the issue.
  - krapp 8y ago
    People like to joke about and deride America's litigious culture but the US doesn't have the same labor rights infrastructure as other countries... sometimes lawsuits are the only legal recourse a "typical American" has.
krapp 8y ago
The system didn't need to be stopped. The employee's contract wasn't renewed, which is indistinguishable from a decision terminate him, so the system executed the termination as scheduled. The system did exactly what it was intended to do, it was the humans who screwed up. Humans who presumably understood the way the system was designed, and didn't care enough to do some due diligence. >I also do not understand why a check couldn't be cut. Submit to accounts payable with an email approval? He was fired. It doesn't matter that people didn't intend for him to be, he was, it went through the system, it was a done deal. Paying people not in your employ is fraud, even under the best of intentions. The real lesson here is that few of us, no matter how much money we make, how into the culture we are or how long our tenure has been, are more than a row in a database to our employer, and we can be dropped at any time. The contractor in this case would not have had much more "job security" with humans in the loop.
- ashelmire 8y ago
  >He was fired. It doesn't matter that people didn't intend for him to be, he was, it went through the system, it was a done deal. Paying people not in your employ is fraud, even under the best of intentions. There's basically a certainty that it was a violation of his contract and company policies that made it not legally sound. A company can also pay whoever it wants for any reason.
  - krapp 8y ago
    IANAL so I might be wrong, but if they terminated his contract, I would assume they can't still legally pay him as if they hadn't. Of course, he's also well within his rights to sue over it.
    - madeofpalk 8y ago
      He's a contractor, so can't he just submit an invoice and receive a payment? Or does 'contractor' mean something different in the US? If he missed out on pay then it's because no one cared enough/someone didn't care enough to sort it out.

MBCook 8y ago

That’s what I was thinking. If you had a contract and your manager was saying you were supposed to be working… Why not sue for the three weeks of pay that they illegitimately kept you from earning?

madeofpalk 8y ago
Because lawsuits are hard? Seeing a "why not sue" as a response is very "typical American" for outsiders.
- MBCook 8y ago
  Yeah. It’s what I was thinking throughout most of the article, assuming that the end would be “I lost my job and there was nothing I could do about it“. It’s not like it was a three day thing, I could sort of understand that. Since they are a contractor, it also seems like perhaps the company that they are actually employed with should be paying them for the contract company’s screwup. That would also probably heavily incentivize the company they actually work for to put pressure on the contractee to fix the issue.
- krapp 8y ago
  People like to joke about and deride America's litigious culture but the US doesn't have the same labor rights infrastructure as other countries... sometimes lawsuits are the only legal recourse a "typical American" has.

krapp 8y ago

The system didn't need to be stopped. The employee's contract wasn't renewed, which is indistinguishable from a decision terminate him, so the system executed the termination as scheduled. The system did exactly what it was intended to do, it was the humans who screwed up. Humans who presumably understood the way the system was designed, and didn't care enough to do some due diligence. >I also do not understand why a check couldn't be cut. Submit to accounts payable with an email approval? He was fired. It doesn't matter that people didn't intend for him to be, he was, it went through the system, it was a done deal. Paying people not in your employ is fraud, even under the best of intentions. The real lesson here is that few of us, no matter how much money we make, how into the culture we are or how long our tenure has been, are more than a row in a database to our employer, and we can be dropped at any time. The contractor in this case would not have had much more "job security" with humans in the loop.

ashelmire 8y ago
>He was fired. It doesn't matter that people didn't intend for him to be, he was, it went through the system, it was a done deal. Paying people not in your employ is fraud, even under the best of intentions. There's basically a certainty that it was a violation of his contract and company policies that made it not legally sound. A company can also pay whoever it wants for any reason.
- krapp 8y ago
  IANAL so I might be wrong, but if they terminated his contract, I would assume they can't still legally pay him as if they hadn't. Of course, he's also well within his rights to sue over it.
  - madeofpalk 8y ago
    He's a contractor, so can't he just submit an invoice and receive a payment? Or does 'contractor' mean something different in the US? If he missed out on pay then it's because no one cared enough/someone didn't care enough to sort it out.