5 ms·

TL;DR: lawsuit claims dude's boss had unreasonable-but-believable demands on availability, yelp denies it. No real information is given as to the up-front unde

TL;DR: lawsuit claims dude's boss had unreasonable-but-believable demands on availability, yelp denies it. No real information is given as to the up-front understanding of expectation, nor evidence for either side. I'd be interested in the details once everything is decided, but as it stands there just isn't much to do other than speculate....or crack jokes about reviewing Yelp.

excalibur 8y ago
> as it stands there just isn't much to do other than speculate....or crack jokes about reviewing Yelp. Or we could debate the merits of managers and/or company policies requiring "24/7/365" availability, even without enough evidence to make an informed judgment in this particular case. I personally think it's bullshit.
- ergothus 8y ago
  Sure...but is there really a debate? I'm willing to accept a sliver of jobs that require that availability, if they involve saving lives or huge sums of money AND are explicitly agreed to by both parties. Other than some quibbles about if money qualifies and if so how much, I don't really expect a lot of argument - even the jerks demanding such availability without caveats tend to only demand it when they are the boss involved. Edit: Based on the other comments on the story so far...I may be wrong.
  - roywiggins 8y ago
    Just rotate on-call hours around several employees. Putting "lives or huge sums of money" onto one singular employee who must be in contact at all times is a recipe for disaster.
    - ergothus 8y ago
      I was thinking of things like a personal accountant for a mega-millionaire or a doctor on a crisis case...but even then you're right. Even with my qualifier of "sliver" and that I was mentally thinking in time-spans of less than 365 days...yeah. No call.
jhall1468 8y ago
> I'd be interested in the details once everything is decided I'll give you a preview: This is going to settle very quickly. Yelp probably wins the court case, but there's no way they are letting this type of story stay in the press forever.
- doktrin 8y ago
  Assuming things went down more or less as described, I wouldn't put much stock in Yelps chances should this end up in front of a jury.
  - jhall1468 8y ago
    They 100% win this. They didn't treat him differently because he's religious, they made him work despite being religious. That's perfectly legal in the US.
    - klodolph 8y ago
      > That's perfectly legal in the US. This is incorrect. This behavior is illegal according to title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is not enough to treat people “equally”, because it is trivially easy to come up with “equal” but discriminatory requirements. Instead, companies are required to reasonably accommodate the religious observations of their employees, unless there is some compelling reason otherwise.
      - jhall1468 8y ago
        Reasonable accommodation doesn't mean the day off and it certainly doesn't mean the day off without requesting it in advance. To be clear, I'm not defending Yelp requiring people to be on email/phone 24/7, but his statement makes it very clear that he never made a request for this. Should he have to? No it's a weekend. But legally they aren't required to. Had he requested, in advance, that he not be contacted on Sunday for religious observation you can bet that would absolutely be public. It'd be a slam dunk case. So yes, it is perfectly legal to email someone on a religious holiday and expect an answer if they didn't request accommodations ahead of time. There's no court in the country that wouldn't call that unreasonable.

excalibur 8y ago

> as it stands there just isn't much to do other than speculate....or crack jokes about reviewing Yelp. Or we could debate the merits of managers and/or company policies requiring "24/7/365" availability, even without enough evidence to make an informed judgment in this particular case. I personally think it's bullshit.

ergothus 8y ago
Sure...but is there really a debate? I'm willing to accept a sliver of jobs that require that availability, if they involve saving lives or huge sums of money AND are explicitly agreed to by both parties. Other than some quibbles about if money qualifies and if so how much, I don't really expect a lot of argument - even the jerks demanding such availability without caveats tend to only demand it when they are the boss involved. Edit: Based on the other comments on the story so far...I may be wrong.
- roywiggins 8y ago
  Just rotate on-call hours around several employees. Putting "lives or huge sums of money" onto one singular employee who must be in contact at all times is a recipe for disaster.
  - ergothus 8y ago
    I was thinking of things like a personal accountant for a mega-millionaire or a doctor on a crisis case...but even then you're right. Even with my qualifier of "sliver" and that I was mentally thinking in time-spans of less than 365 days...yeah. No call.

jhall1468 8y ago

> I'd be interested in the details once everything is decided I'll give you a preview: This is going to settle very quickly. Yelp probably wins the court case, but there's no way they are letting this type of story stay in the press forever.

doktrin 8y ago
Assuming things went down more or less as described, I wouldn't put much stock in Yelps chances should this end up in front of a jury.
- jhall1468 8y ago
  They 100% win this. They didn't treat him differently because he's religious, they made him work despite being religious. That's perfectly legal in the US.
  - klodolph 8y ago
    > That's perfectly legal in the US. This is incorrect. This behavior is illegal according to title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. It is not enough to treat people “equally”, because it is trivially easy to come up with “equal” but discriminatory requirements. Instead, companies are required to reasonably accommodate the religious observations of their employees, unless there is some compelling reason otherwise.
    - jhall1468 8y ago
      Reasonable accommodation doesn't mean the day off and it certainly doesn't mean the day off without requesting it in advance. To be clear, I'm not defending Yelp requiring people to be on email/phone 24/7, but his statement makes it very clear that he never made a request for this. Should he have to? No it's a weekend. But legally they aren't required to. Had he requested, in advance, that he not be contacted on Sunday for religious observation you can bet that would absolutely be public. It'd be a slam dunk case. So yes, it is perfectly legal to email someone on a religious holiday and expect an answer if they didn't request accommodations ahead of time. There's no court in the country that wouldn't call that unreasonable.