Background: One of my Drones, from Sector 7G, has been having chronic tardiness issues, and frequent absences from the office. He called out on Monday, notifying me by text message 45 minutes after his scheduled start time, that he would not be in. I had a phone conversation with him about an hour later, telling him the behavior wasn’t acceptable and would not be tolerated. I told him he needed to be in the office yesterday (Tuesday), on time, and be prepared to discuss his future with the company, which I made clear he was jeopardizing. We agreed he should be in the office at 9:00 AM, and not be late (he has been chronically late for weeks and weeks). He texted me late Monday night, and said he would be in at 10:00 AM, as he was staying up late watching basketball. I replied and told him if he wasn’t going to be there by 9:00 AM, to not bother coming in at all. His reply was that he would mail in his company equipment. Early yesterday morning, he texted me again, and told me that he once again was not going to be in.
I sent him an email around noon yesterday indicating I accepted his resignation (based on his message saying he would mail his kit back to the home office), but he asserts I fired him.
I think that if your boss tells you to come into the office to discuss your poor performance, and you refuse, telling him instead that you’ll mail your shit back to him, you’ve quit.
If you’re in the US, I suspect you’re going to be seeing his filing for unemployment soon, based on your firing him. Does your company have a policy about what degree of absenteeism constitutes resignation?
Yes, I think this is it. He was trying to get you to fire him so he could go claim unemployment. In most jurisdictions, you can get unemployment if you are fired for reasons other than serious misconduct (e.g. embezzlement would count as serious misconduct)- this serves as a check on employers to make sure that they can’t recharacterize a layoff as a firing by trumping up vague “performance” issues at the last minute and thereby prevent you from getting unemployment.
If you’ve relayed everything correctly, I’d say he quit when he said he’d mail in his stuff. When you said don’t bother coming in at all, you didn’t specify not to come back in ever.
It’s ambiguous enough that the unemployment folks will likely give him the benefit of the doubt and pay out. There’s no letter of termination or of resignation, just the email traffic.
That is a potential problem, but in my limited experience as an employer, I’ve often found unemployment to be more lenient with me than I expected.
I actually had a pretty similar issue with an employee who wanted to leave early and my office manager stopped him to clarify scheduling… he walked out halfway through that conversation. Later that night he texted me saying he wouldn’t be in tomorrow. In the next week, he wanted clarification on why he was fired and we both said “What?! You walked out.”
Obviously, there wasn’t much documentation there other than a text message and some notes we’d taken at the time, but the state UI took our side. That makes me feel like the OP would probably have a solid case.
That’s a conditional, though: he still had a job if he bothered to show up at 9. It was his failure to show up that ended the job, and that was his decision. He quit.
Yeah, but he had been getting away with this for weeks. I could see how he could claim that he didn’t believe that this time not coming in on time was the same as resigning. So I said fired.
If there is a policy about tardiness, and if his continued violation of it can be documented, I can see the argument that he got fired for cause. I don’t know what that does to unemployment.
You don’t get unemployment for quitting or for being fired for cause. I agree they sometimes err on the side of giving benefits, but unless he has a drastically different version of events, he shouldn’t get benefits either way you characterize it
If he files for unemployment and says you fired him, I’d say “well, no, he quit because he chose not to come in when he was directed to come into work” … explain it as you did here, complete with print-outs or pictures of his texts. I’d make it clear in my response to any unemployment claim notice that even if the unemployment folks want to view it as you firing him, then he was “fired” due to insubordination that is refusing to show up at work on time … and he couldn’t even be bothered to do so when it came to a final warning meeting about that very issue. Insubordination is willful misconduct. At any rate, unless you fire people fairly often, it won’t affect your unemployment payroll tax contribution rate.
Can’t even fathom why “lawsuit” was on the vote list. While anyone’s free to sue anyone else for anything, I can’t imagine why he’d bother. Any worker that sues an employer should think about it long and hard, because that’s a matter of public record and a prudent prospective employer that does due diligence will find out about it and (for better or worse) likely steer clear.
Send him a termination letter immediately, specifically mentioning all the tardies and that his continued lateness violated your stated company policies. Mention that it constitutes job abandonment. Send it registered mail so he has to sign for it. Once he signs for it, and if he doesn’t contest it, he has accepted it.
Unemployment offices view job abandonment just the same as a quit. Document your phone calls and/or texts and keep that info with a copy of the term letter and the registered mail receipt.
When unemployment contacts you by mail with notice of the claim, they give you the opportunity to attach a note detailing the circumstances of the severance. The likelihood is that he will have no documentation to support his claim that he was fired. You, on the other hand, will have documentation.
I’ve recently won two similar unemployment claims in just that exact matter. And they were in two different states.
Occasionally a representative from the unemployment office will call you with additional questions - yet another reason to document everything you possibly can - as they will want dates and times, if available. It will then be up to the employee to refute your statement.
Really? I was fired about 18 months ago from a university, won my unemployment claim, and have idly wondered if their premium went up as a result. I don’t know how many claims they get against them, and how many they lose, but I imagine it’s a very small number, especially with losing claims.