left high and dry

sloansmith · January 2011

I have a friend that when she gave her two weeks notice she was terminated instantly. She was in FL at the time and the company told her that she would have to find her own way home. Is this legal?

ACU Frank · January 2011

No law against it here... not sure about your state.

NaeNae55 · January 2011

Unfortunately, professionalism is not legislated. Clearly someone with authority is not playing nice. First, if it was me I would try to contact someone else in the company who has authority. Just because my supervisor is playing nasty doesn't mean it is a company policy. I would talk with someone in HR or my boss's boss. If that didn't help then I would, in a very friendly way, let other employees know what happened. I wouldn't call anyone names or spew any anger. I would just keep to the facts and speak as professionally as I could. At least that way this will not happen to anyone else who works for the same organization. Plus if this company is behaving so badly their other employees and customers should know what to expect from them.

Good luck to your friend. I hope they get home safely.

ACU Frank · January 2011

Well, I can think of possible situations in which I wouldn't blame the company, Nae. I don't have enough details in this instance to know how it occurred, but let me throw out an example:

Susie gets hired as a sales rep for Google. She lobbies to go to a convention in Orlando, and Google sends her at great expense. At the convention, a Facebook rep offers her a position with their company. She accepts, and calls her boss to give notice. Now, is anyone going to feel sorry for Susie if her boss tells her she's on her own at that point?

NaeNae55 · January 2011

If she continues to represent Google while at the convention she is doing her job and Google should pay to bring her home. She has a right to go work somewhere else when she gets home, and giving Google plenty of notice is the right thing to do. If Google leaves her high and dry, then she has personal expenses she didn't anticipate because she doing what she was paid for TODAY (not 2 weeks from now).

If she was caught stealing or sending Google clients to FB, that might be different. I can't imagine someone like that complaining to their friends and then the friends feeling the injustice enough to post a question on a forum like this. I could be wrong though. I have been wrong before. It happened in 1996.

ACU Frank · January 2011

[QUOTE=NaeNae55;721439] I can't imagine someone like that complaining to their friends and then the friends feeling the injustice enough to post a question on a forum like this. [/QUOTE]

Hahahaha! You're spending too much time in Accounting!

Dutch2 · January 2011

To my knowledge there is no law against accepting their termination effective immediately. If they should have a "mad on" and could do harm to the company or employees if they worked out their last two weeks, it would be in the best interest of everyone to dismiss them immediatley. Or if they have lined up another job with a similar business and they could use this time to take "trade secrets" with them or lists of customers, etc, then they do not need to stay the last two weeks. If you do not honor their two week notice and do not go ahead and pay them for this time, if they are dismissed, they may be able to collect unemployment benefits since they were term'ed.

NaeNae55 · January 2011

You are right Dutch. You don't have to let them work out their notice, and you don't have to pay them that time even if you decide to have them leave immediately (though as you stated, there might be unemployment repercussions). My problem is with the employer deciding to term the employee immediately and then leaving the ex-employee high and dry. They should have brought the employee back home at once and THEN termed them if they didn't want the employee to work out their notice. To make them find their own way home crosses the line into petty IMHO.

sloansmith · January 2011

thanks for the help

Paul in Cannon Beach · January 2011

I hope the other employees of this fine company learn the valuable lesson of not giving the courtesy of two weeks notice.

left high and dry

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