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Can your employer fire you after you quit?
- variable11 8y agoEmployers or HR managers who try this need to be prosecuted, lose their academic credentials, and be removed from any possibility of ever abusing employees again. The US has tilted way too far in favor of criminal employers with these garbage arbitrage clauses and many other abuses and other forms of open fraud.
- hsnewman 8y agoI have always wondered if you see a termination in the future can you trump it by submitting a 6 month resignation...
- notauser 8y agoQuite possibly. I'm a line manager and amicable resignations are much cheaper than terminations when you add up goodwill, management time, and direct costs.
- chrismeller 8y agoOf course you can tell them that you're leaving in 6 months. Whether or not they accept that is really up to them... I'm also not sure what resigning to avoid being terminated would get you, since, depending upon the termination reason, you would be eligible for unemployment benefits but those wouldn't apply at all if you were to resign.
- scott00 8y agoResigning allows you to answer no to "Have you ever been fired or asked to resign from any past position?" on future job applications.
- chrismeller 8y agoI don't know that I've ever been asked that before, but similar to giving more than 2 weeks notice... why would you ever answer yes to that?
- bluGill 8y agoIf you were fired from a job they can check and find out. This is bad, they may have to fire you for lieing on your application, even if they would have hired you for a yes. Note that they have no way to know you were asked to resign. When you are asked to leave company records will show "left for personal reasons": it is illegal for them to ask what they were.
- cannonedhamster 8y agoI've been fired before. I'm up front about it when people ask. It's never been a problem. Not sure why this is considered a stigma unless you were really doing something wrong.
- weka 8y agoBecause being fired is associated with incompetence, no?
- pnutjam 8y agoumm... weren't you "asked to resign"?
- wccrawford 8y agoI would bet it depends on just how much the company wants to get rid of you. If they're on the fence, they might just wait out the 6 months. If they want you gone immediately, the trick isn't going to work. And if they have a policy of locking you out as soon as you give notice, it's not going to matter either way.
- pnw_hazor 8y agoWhy would you do that?
- scarface74 8y agoWhy in the world would you give an employer 60 days notice instead of the accepted two weeks.
- rwmj 8y agoPresumably because you (unlike the employer in this case) aren't a nasty person and would like to let your employer have time to hand over and tidy up tasks, hire or train a replacement and so on.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- chipgap98 8y ago2 weeks is the standard amount of notice to give to employers and I think part of that reason is that companies may let you go if you give them too much notice. Sure there are situations where more may be warranted, but 2 months notice is long enough that it doesn't make sense to staff you on new projects or give you new responsibilities.
- Aromasin 8y agoThis seems like an American phenomenon. I'm planning on handing in a notice soon, and from asking around it seems like 4 weeks minimum is the standard in the UK. A 2 weeks notice only happens when you leave on really unfriendly terms.
- rootusrootus 8y agoIt is very culturally dependent. In India, for example, four weeks notice might get you blacklisted, you're expected to give a lot more than that.
- overcast 8y agoYou don't owe the company you work for anything. You worked, in exchange for money. End of transaction. Two weeks is being courteous, sixty days is being ridiculous. See the comment below, where Microsoft guards escort you out two days after giving them two weeks notice. This is not unique to MS. Do companies normally give you 14-60 days to find a new job before firing you? Nope.
- Simulacra 8y agoI worked at a Microsoft affiliate a few years back, and it was common knowledge that if you put in your two weeks notice, a couple of days later armed security would come and escort you out.
- justin66 8y ago> a Microsoft affiliate What is that?
- Simulacra 8y agoTelemarketing for O365, etc.
- manigandham 8y agoOther than armed security, this is common in many sectors where you will be walked out the same day. You'll get paid as expected but won't have access. It's not worth the potential data and customer risk to companies once you've stated your intent to leave.
- scarface74 8y agoHow are you any more of a risk after you let them know of your intent to leave than before you let them know? You had an intent to leave the minute you started looking for a job. If you wanted to harm the company, you wouldn’t have given them notice.
- lb1lf 8y agoProbably comes down to HR and Corp security not taking the chance. Obviously, if you had malicious intent, you would have ample opportunity to act before giving notice. They just want to make sure they did what they could in case you should in fact have malicious intent. 'Oh, we escorted him off the premises within the hour; this one is not on us...'
- 8y ago
- baddox 8y agoIt sounds like the person received unemployment benefits until their intended resignation date. That seems fair, right? You certainly wouldn’t receive unemployment benefits after you resigned. As for wrongful termination, I don’t know the law behind that, but this certainly doesn’t obviously seem wrongful to me. What am I missing?
- chrismeller 8y agoYeah, that's the way I read it. Though they didn't specify, I assumed they gave the 60 days notice because they had a new job that, for whatever reason, was slated to start on January 1st. I don't think I'd ever have given that much notice (unless it was for some reason legally required) for specifically this reason. Either way, even if I didn't have any new employment lined up, I would have expected to collect my remaining paychecks and then that would be that - no unemployment at all. Aside from a little extra cash (since the unemployment they did get wouldn't have been anywhere near the amount their paychecks would have been for) I'm also not really sure what the end goal here is... just put this crappy employer behind you and move on.
- scott00 8y agoUnemployment benefits are likely to be substantially less than wages. In Massachusetts, unemployment benefits are about 50% of wages, with a cap of $795 per week (which works out to an annualized rate of $41,340/year). So the employee is probably in worse financial shape than they expected to be. IMO, the issue here isn't wrongful termination, it's providing false information to the state. Firing someone because they intend to resign in the future is probably legal, but it doesn't change the fact that they were fired. It sounds like the employer reported that they resigned, which simply isn't true.
- baddox 8y agoThere’s no question that unemployment benefits are worse for that employee than their full employment benefits, and that extended unemployment benefits are better for the employee than them ending on January 1. I just don’t think that’s a sufficient argument for saying that the employee is entitled to those things legally or ethically.
- kmlx 8y agoi fire people who don’t work for me all the time :)
- Kurtz79 8y agoFunny. In Spain (and I'm sure other countries) you are owed severance pay and can claim unemployment benefits in case your employer fires you/laids you off, but not in case you resign on your own. Few employers would "fire" an employee resigning (also, "asking" to be fired is highly illegal), unless he/she were a very recent hire for which severance pay would be low.
- lucozade 8y agoIn Europe, we don't really have the concept of at-will employment so an employer can't legally terminate your employment without a good reason. And resigning isn't usually classed as a good reason. I'm not sure about Spain, but in the UK there is a difference between being fired i.e. terminated with cause and laid off i.e. made redundant. In the former, I don't believe there's any requirement for severance. In the latter there is a statutory minimum severance. Also, if you're actually fired, your rights to unemployment benefits change. Usually some form of delay and/or reduction.
- DanBC 8y agoIsn't it a bit more complicated in England? An employee who's been working for the company for less than two years is fired for anything but reasons connected to protected characteristics doesn't have any recourse if they're fired. The employer doesn't need to give a reason.
- rlpb 8y agoCitation please? I was under the impression that UK employers always need to give a (valid) reason. The only change at two years of which I'm aware is that this is the point at which redundancy payments (US: severence pay) starts to become due in case of redundancy.
- roliver 8y agoQualifying period to claim unfair dismissal at tribunal is 2 years: https://www.gov.uk/dismissal/what-to-do-if-youre-dismissed https://www.gov.uk/dismissal/what-to-do-if-youre-dismissed
- jjuel 8y agoSo wait this person was going to quit, but then got fired. So after getting fired they receive unemployment benefits which they would not have received otherwise (obviously they would have gotten fully paid for 60 days). But now are mad that the unemployment isn't lasting past the 60 days (in which after 60 days fired or resigned they wouldn't have gotten anything anyway). I guess I just don't understand what this plan was. Were they hoping to just milk out 60 more days worth of pay, and then travel or something. It appears there was no plan of a new postition lined up at all. So we may not be getting a whole story here and I would like to know the whole story. Sure it seems bad by the employer, but we still are unsure of what the employee was planning here either. Maybe after 2 days of working after giving 60 days they weren't performing their duties anymore so they fired them. They could have been just hoping to get 2 months worth of pay, but been not expected to do anything since they were leaving. I can't make any assumptions, but without a full story this is impossible to judge who is truly in the wrong. I actually once put in two weeks for a job, and then later when the CTO found out he said they didn't accept and I was asked to leave before 2 weeks. I, however, never thought of that as being fired, and I was leaving for a better position so it was no skin off my back. I just got a break between jobs I may not have had before.
- pnutjam 8y agoMaybe he was due to vest something after those 60 days?
- peterkelly 8y ago“We do not accept your resignation.” “Well I don't accept your termination!”
- lasereyes136 8y agoThe best thing for the employer to do would be to accept the resignation with only 2 weeks notice and tell the person not to come in for the 2 weeks (and pay them for the two weeks). This assumes that the employer doesn't trust the employee and doesn't think they will behave during the time between notice and termination. If an employer things the employee will behave there is usually no harm keeping them on for the notice period. Not a lawyer this isn't legal advice, consult your lawyer before doing anything like firing an employee or accepting a termination notice for any period other than the one in the notice.
- paxys 8y agoThis is what usually happens. The employee is terminated everywhere but on payroll, so they can't come in, have to return all equipment, don't have any access etc. The company basically didn't want to pay those extra checks so they pulled this stunt.
- CoolGuySteve 8y agoIt can get a lot worse in states with onerous non-compete laws. When I quit Tudor Investment, they forced me to work for an extra 3 months. If I didn't, they threatened to fire me 'with cause' which under NY state law means they could enforce my non-compete without paying me. 1 week before I was supposed to leave, my manager tried to sandbag me with a list of 30 tasks so that he could force me to stay longer. So I terminated my employment using the 'right to work' clause and they carried out their threat, firing me after I legally quit (twice!). This kind of non-compete abuse is probably illegal but fighting it through arbitration would be expensive. Those assholes still owe me money in fact. Don't ever deal with the wage thieves at Tudor Investment.
- sk5t 8y agoYour state Department of Labor probably takes nonpayment of wages very seriously.
- CoolGuySteve 8y agoYou're responsible for hiring a lawyer and suing the company if you make over $900/week, which probably every developer in NYC does. https://labor.ny.gov/workerprotection/laborstandards/workprot/lshmpg.shtm https://labor.ny.gov/workerprotection/laborstandards/workpro...
- bonestamp2 8y agoOuch. Hopefully you left a factful glassdoor review for the next person.
- jacquesm 8y agoLikely this comment is worth 10 glassdoor reviews, and could alert others still working there as well to these practices.
- bonestamp2 8y ago
- pnw_hazor 8y agoIf the employee's 60-day notice was non-binding or aspirational it seems to me that their unemployment benefits should not have been cut off at the 60-day mark. Because the employee always had the option to change their mind and withdraw their notice to quit. In the unlikely case that it was impossible for the employee's employment to extend beyond the 60-day mark after giving a 60-day notice, it seems reasonable for the unemployment benefits to be cut off at the 60-day mark. But absent some express contract term or law, just giving notice would not prevent an employee from withdrawing notice before leaving the job.
- paxys 8y agoThey said the company chose not to accept their resignation notice, so the dates are void anyways. It is a firing, plain and simple.
- clubm8 8y ago>1 week before I was supposed to leave, my manager tried to sandbag me with a list of 30 tasks so that he could force me to stay How does that work? If you don't finish them he can fire you for poor performance? I find that hard to believe.
- pnw_hazor 8y agoIn at least some states, being fired for incompetence (including failing to finish assigned tasks on-time) is not disqualifying for unemployment benefits.
- RickJWagner 8y agoI don't know how many tv shows I've seen that go like this: Boss: "You're fired!" Worker: "You can't fire me, because I quit!" I always thought that was an odd ordering.