In California at least, if not elsewhere, immediately firing an employee who gave two weeks notice usually allows them to receive unemployment benefits.
In most cases where someone quits and gives their two weeks notice, and then asked to go ahead and leave that day, they aren’t being fired. They will still be paid through the two weeks, the employer maybe believes that their presence over the two week period may be disruptive to the ongoing operations. Again this isn’t a firing but giving that individual paid time off for the remaining two weeks of their employment. In those situations they wouldn’t be eligible for unemployment benefits.
It happened to me. I had accepted a job offer for a short term job, but a few days later I was offered a permanent position by someone else (I’m still there). I called the first job and explained the situation. They were disappointed, but understood how a permanent position trumped what he was offering.
I had an experience like this at my previous job. My boss was a horrible bully. I threatened to quit more than once, but then we’d talk and he’d convince me to stay.
The last time he bullied me though, I quit for just cause and won my unemployment claim.
Now that was satisfying.
I agree that if they pay you for the full 2 weeks of your notice, you wouldn’t be eligible for unemployment benefits. But I don’t know if that’s actually most cases - Skald implies above that they force the leaving employee to use up accrued vacation time for that two weeks, instead of paying them to sit at home.
It is with my company and should be with anybody in the U.S. thinking economically. Paying two weeks of pay is normally cheaper than your unemployment insurance rates going up because you have another involuntary termination on your records.
I’ve done it (as employer). Twice.
In one case, I was shocked, because I thought I was just outlining my reasons to change how the job was structured, but she freaked out. She didn’t exactly show up the next day, but she did have second thoughts. I was only trying to restructure the job because it wasn’t working well, so I had little motivation to take her back in any event.
In the other case, I thought it was great that he saved me the trouble of firing him. On Monday, he tried to argue that it’s “normal” to get frustrated in the middle of a project, storm out of work early and blow off your Friday appointments with no communication. Doesn’t everyone do that now and then? I’m a little surprised he thought that argument would help his cause.
I have seen this happen in civil service. You can just walk out the door and quit, but really, you’ve got to use up your leave so most people who get in this situatuion take a few days off and come back.
I have also seen a man directed to take admin leave for some brief period of time to decide whether he wanted to ‘get with the program’ or quit.
Firing a civil servant is not that hard. Anyone who says it is, just doesn’t know how to do it.
We were a 24/7 operation and a group of employees with pretty much interchangeable skills. The boss would either tap someone to work overtime or call in one of the part-timers who worked weekends.
Hell, they once fired an employee in the middle of a shift (They had to. He was actually violating a contract at that moment) and business went on.
Ok, that makes more sense. But out of curiosity, how long did it take before word got around and the normal mechanism for quitting became telling him at the end of the shift, “I quit, effective immediately. Nice knowing you.” and walking out the door, never to be seen again?
I had an employer deliberately set out to make me mad enough that I’d quit and then they wouldn’t be on the hook for unemployment benefits. It didn’t quite work out the way they planned.
Actually, it never really did. We had employees who would storm in, quit and walk out, but we always had employees who would give the two weeks notice we were all taught to give, and the boss would tell them to just go ahead and leave.