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Unemployment rate is low, and minimum wage jobs are generally pretty easy to come by. She’s only paid for the hours she worked. The effort she made by shaming the manager could have been spent on her son and then on finding another job.
The effort is awesome, as now her ex employer has been exposed, so future people applying go in "eyes wide open".
No more being a horrific workplace w/o having your 17th century practices exposed.
The boss should have worded her speech more delicately. I agree it is heartless.
For argument's sake, a business is not required to pay wage to an absent employee for any length of time. As a representative of a business, it is not up to the boss to be responsible for the emotional well-being of employees That's cold but accurate.
There are always choices and the mom made hers. Her son. Besides who knows the Good that is going to come out of this!!
I didn't see anywhere that she expected to be paid for time she didn't work. Maybe she did, but perhaps she just wanted to be sure she had her job to come back to when she was ready. If she had been covered by FMLA and had the time to do the paperwork, that doesn't include getting paid anyway.
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Originally Posted by ihatetodust
A manager once told me it was the hospitals job to take care of my (dying) mother and my job to be at work . . .
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Originally Posted by 2Loud
Back in 1999 when my wife was carrying our first she was admitted to the hospital after a routine check up. She called me at work to let me know. She was two months early and obviously we were very scared for our unborn. I got some people in the office to back fill me in a matter of minutes as they were scared too. Then went and told my boss that my wife was being admitted and the baby might not make it... I need to go. He looked up from his desk and said, "Why? Are you a doctor?". Cold dead stare at me. I just looked at him and said I gotta go...and left.
She was born a few days later at 3 pounds. It was a scary month to say the least with touch and go, but 30 days later we finally were able to bring her home. In that month his words stuck with me and in those trips for the month of back and forth to work and the hospital I swore I would get another job as soon as I could. Added to the story, all 6 of us that worked for him left within a six month period.
19 years later I have a very talented daughter going to college. Maybe I was not "a doctor", but I was the first able to to go see her in the NICU and I know that made a difference.
I would have liked to think that the manager was a weird aberration but with 2 people having comparable experiences in a not very long thread, I guess there are more people around like that than I would have realized.
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Originally Posted by markjames68
What’s a “progressive work environment”?
How many of your employees are unskilled minimum wage earners? People who join your company as a career generally have a different outlook than casual workers. They expect more but also give more.
Even "unskilled minimum wage earners" can be good and loyal employee. I work at a hospital, and many people on the housekeeping staff have been working there for years, even decades. For their own reasons, they have decided that's the kind of job they want, and they show up on time, work hard, do a good job, are nice to their fellow employees and the patients they interact with. I have a supermarket I've been going to since I moved to Denver over a decade and some of the cashiers have been working there that whole time, and I'm sure they started a long time before that. Not everyone wants or is capable of handling a professional career path job with an opportunity to advance. But everyone who wants to can be a good and loyal employee when they are treated respectfully by their employer, regardless of their actual work duties.
The effort is awesome, as now her ex employer has been exposed, so future people applying go in "eyes wide open".
No more being a horrific workplace w/o having your 17th century practices exposed.
I don’t disagree with your comments, but if the manager was an aberration then the ex-employer didn’t really need to be “exposed”.
A good employer will find good employees. A poor employer will only be able to keep poor employees. In a good job market good employees don’t need to stay at bad employers.
Costco is a good example of a good employer. But slackers won’t last long. They pay well and treat their people well, but expect loyalty and performance in return.
I don’t disagree with your comments, but if the manager was an aberration then the ex-employer didn’t really need to be “exposed”.
A good employer will find good employees. A poor employer will only be able to keep poor employees. In a good job market good employees don’t need to stay at bad employers.
Costco is a good example of a good employer. But slackers won’t last long. They pay well and treat their people well, but expect loyalty and performance in return.
If they are an aberration, the exposure will have a short shelf life, but, more importantly, the replacement manager will be on his/her best behavior in handling staff work-life balance issues. That will improve employee retention and morale, which will be reflected in the public image of the employer
Poor managerial skills. Should’ve handled with compassion even with same end result.
Nobody would find fault if she simply said that unfortunately it’s a business she has to keep running while at same time expressing sympathy and offering to accommodate “if possible”.
Under the FMLA regulations, interfering with an employee’s FMLA leave includes not only refusing to authorize FMLA leave, but also discouraging an employee from using leave. As the Court stated in Smith-Schrenk v. Genon Energy Services, L.L.C. (2015), “there is no right in the FMLA to be ‘left alone’ or be completely relieved from responding to an employer’s discrete inquiries.” (text source)
Amazingly enough this lady had chosen media to get the message out. I'd have used the courts.
In my years of tenure in HR, our policy held up for FMLA leave and honoring the staffs duties outside the employment arena. We accepted Verbal notification followed up later by documentation from the personnels Doctor or Lawyer. Yes sometimes FMLA was utilized for family adoptions and other cross state matters that required them to leave the area under the stipulations granted with FMLA leave.
It would behoove a business to understand what it can and cannot DO when an employee notifies them of an emergency in the family. Its incomprehensible to ask them to leave the hospital and rush over to work to fill out any papers or produce the medically signed paperwork immediately after calling.
FMLA might not apply. You need to be at a company for a year, the company must have at least 50 employees, and you do need to submit appropriate paperwork.
We don’t know if any of these things were done.
That's my problem with a lot of employment law in the US. There are so many various loopholes and protections to employees are pretty weak, for even basic decency, unless an employer comes out and says something blatantly stupid like "I'm firing you because the new owner doesn't like black people working here." (which obviously should be a big no-no, but it shouldn't be the only big no-no that gets an employer corrected in unethical practices). Of course, many (and hopefully most) employers don't need the big stick of the law to not do something so reprehensible but the big stick (or multiple big sticks) is still needed to keep the really bad ones in line.
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Originally Posted by BobNJ1960
If I worked for this corp, and the manager was not fired for cause, I would seek new employment based on principle.
I am hoping the ex manager is out of work a long, long, long time.
I just wonder if the results would have been the same had she not put her story out there.
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Originally Posted by markjames68
Unemployment rate is low, and minimum wage jobs are generally pretty easy to come by. She’s only paid for the hours she worked. The effort she made by shaming the manager could have been spent on her son and then on finding another job.
Most of the time I'm with your viewpoint on this and am generally not a fan of this kind of social media shaming as it can border on libel that only tells one side of the story. However, in this case, I think there's a good value in what she did because I just think the employer could have been apt to do the exact same thing to another person trying to look out for someone in their family if they hadn't had some heat pressing on them. She not only was trying to look out for her child, she was trying to look out for people who would be dealing with the same thing she had to deal with. At least at that company, that manager won't be able to do this again and the company knows their behavior is under closer watch now.
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Originally Posted by Nov3
Under the FMLA regulations, interfering with an employee’s FMLA leave includes not only refusing to authorize FMLA leave, but also discouraging an employee from using leave. As the Court stated in Smith-Schrenk v. Genon Energy Services, L.L.C. (2015), “there is no right in the FMLA to be ‘left alone’ or be completely relieved from responding to an employer’s discrete inquiries.” (text source)
Amazingly enough this lady had chosen media to get the message out. I'd have used the courts.
In my years of tenure in HR, our policy held up for FMLA leave and honoring the staffs duties outside the employment arena. We accepted Verbal notification followed up later by documentation from the personnels Doctor or Lawyer. Yes sometimes FMLA was utilized for family adoptions and other cross state matters that required them to leave the area under the stipulations granted with FMLA leave.
It would behoove a business to understand what it can and cannot DO when an employee notifies them of an emergency in the family. Its incomprehensible to ask them to leave the hospital and rush over to work to fill out any papers or produce the medically signed paperwork immediately after calling.
I understand the point of your post and do appreciate your expertise. My only thought as to why using the courts may not have been her strategy is that a gas station employee isn't typically going to be in a position to have the time, financial resources, or legal background to navigate the complex court system or know the nuances of employee law. And how long would that process even take? Courts are not known to move fast. She did what she could think of to promptly put attention on a disgraceful practice.
And I hope things improved with her son's condition.
Unless you think the employee was flat out lying about her son being on life support, please provide whatever you think could be the appropriate context for the manager to say "There is no reason you can't work" under these circumstances.
Do you believe everything everyone posts on their Facebook account?
Do you believe everything everyone posts on their Facebook account?
One other thing. If my kid were on life support, the last thing I'd be concerned with is how I am being treated at work and then posting it on Facebook. Smells bad all around.
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