visits from a terminated employee

mpinnick

We've got an ex-employee (terminated in January '07 for theft here at work) who continues to show up and visit with old colleagues.  This is somewhat of an uncomfortable situation.  If we have security approach him and ask him to leave, he may follow up with a discrimination suit.  We allow employees have friends visit them while they are on their lunch/dinner breaks.  We are a private college but we do have a couple places that are considered public (our library and out athletic facilities).  Any thoughts or ideas on how to keep this person off campus? Thanks!

 

RuthG

This situation is different from a regular office building where you can have visitors sign in upon entering and, after they are vouched for by your employee, issue them visitor badges. Visitors in an office building may be banned from leaving the reception area without an escort. But in a private college, this is much more difficult. I'm not sure you can really stop him if he is being invited for lunch  in public areas by his friends (former colleagues). If he is just wandering the campus as a former employee, then he might pose a security threat and you might be able to do something about it. This is a tough one.

TXHRGuy

You can request that the police serve the person with a criminal trespass warning.  If the person shows up again after that, then you can call the police and have him or her arrested for trespassing.  I doubt they will return after that.  The fact that some areas are "considered" public does not mean that they are not areas that are owned and controlled by your organization.

I find it difficult to believe that a claim of discrimination would pass the smile test and allowed to trial if the reason the person is being barred from campus is because they were fired for theft.  Of course, a lot hinges on the strength of your case that the person actually stole something or was otherwise in unauthorized possession of something that a reasonable person would have known that they should not have been possessing.  Additionally, former employees are not the same as other employees non-former-employee friends.  Former employees have a past relationship with the organization that may be considered in assessing the desirability of their presence.  If an employee's friend who was not a former employee came onto campus and stole something, you wouldn't want that person back, would you?  You might file a criminal complaint against them for the theft and take other steps such as requesting a criminal trespass warning be issued to prevent their return.

If you wanted to be really aggressive, depending on your policies that may be referenced in cases of poor judgement and disruptive behavior, you may be able to tell people to stop inviting this person, depending on what problems are being caused by that person's presence.