She was hired for a minimum wage position. On her first day she was given paperwork to complete (including stuff needed for taxing her wages). Pretty typical for the job she’d been hired to do.
Perhaps that works for a small company, but for most I have worked for, there is no way an employee can become an employee without the vitals submitted and on file. How can they create a badge, make a pass, begin a time card, or assign a desk or parking space without that info?
Mrs. FtG’s old workplace had a strange case.
One cow-orker moved to another state. But didn’t quit. Called the boss’s phone before office hours every morning and left a message saying they wouldn’t be able to work that day. Went on for months.
Never responded to a phone call or anything.
This was a big problem because they needed to hire a replacement right away. And they couldn’t. As far as HR was concerned, this was still an official employee taking up a slot. (It’s a very touchy-feely place.)
While not being paid (due to 0 hours put it), there were certain benefits still being obtained like health insurance.
Eventually a procedure was worked out where if the (ex-)employee didn’t do certain things, they’d be fired. And that was that. But like I said, took way too long.
Small business with a handful of employees. No badges, no time clock, park wherever you want, and my gf would shoot me if I made passes.
Working in a 911 center, I can say we probably get at least one phone call a week from an employer looking for an employee because they haven’t come to work or called in. I’ve never kept score, but usually the person isn’t dead, although it has happened.
We only have 26 employees total in my center, so we all know each other fairly well. While we make sure we all keep our emergency contacts up to date, we usually will start by talking to the other people on the crew to see if they have been sick or something. We will then call their home/cell. If no answer, we will go to the emergency contact and if that doesn’t work, we will have the PD go by their house.
Speaking from experience, if you have to resort to sending the police, it really helps if you know their exact address, what they drive, and even a date of birth. We have been given addresses to apartment complexes with a hundred units but no apartment number. When that happens, the date of birth helps us look them up to get a better address. Knowing what they drive will also help the officer determine if they are home or not.
One C.S.B. (cool story bro). Employer X called and said they couldn’t get a hold of employee Y, stated that this never happened with this person and that they were truly concerned because of some known health issues. No vehicle information, no emergency contact etc. Officer gets to the house, sees a car in the driveway, no answer at the door, so the officer looks into the living room window. He observes, what looked like “someone” on the couch, covered up. He knocks even louder and still nothing. Since he could see “someone” on the couch, not moving or responding, he assumes the worst and kicks the door in. The “someone” was pillows and a blanket, not a body, and no one in the house. Employee Y had an alarm system, which went off when the officer forces the door. The alarm company calls the center and notifies us of the alarm and tells us that Employee Y was out of town on vacation. It seems that her employer forgot that she had taken some vacation and called us. The alarm company managed to get a hold of the employee, who called us and called her employer. We managed to secure her broken door and kept a close eye on the house until she returned. I know she came to the station and got a copy of the police report and was planning on having her employer pay for the door, but I never heard if that worked out for her or not. A side note, the vehicle in her driveway wasn’t hers, but a neighbor who agreed to park there to make the house look occupied.
Happened twice at the last department I worked in.
First was a graphic designer in my team. We all went home on Friday night, came back in on Monday to find her desk cleared out and all of her work deleted (IT had backups). That was it, no notes, calls, emails to explain what was going on. HR tried all of her contacts etc. with no results.
About three weeks later we found out from HR that she was working in a different state and in a different kind of work completely - apparently she had a sort of ‘road to Damascus’ revelation that she was in the wrong career and took off. HR terminated her employment and noted it on her file in case she applied for another government job.
Second was an IT sub-contractor. Didn’t show up one day and later let his boss know he had moved to another state to work IT there. Boss was pissed and got in touch some of his contacts in the region to let them know what had happened.
Had a fellow developer disappear once and not show up for three days, so was let go. HR never discussed details, but I usually found out through the grapevine. Not with this guy.
Then a week or so later I was fixing a bug and happened to check out one of his former files, and found his resignation “letter”… in the comments. More like a Manifesto actually. What was wrong with the computer industry, etc. I would say he was kinda weird, but we all are.
Where I work, the former employee’s badge wouldn’t have gotten him in the door. 
I’ve had a few dreams where I’ve done stuff like that (usually retail jobs from last decade), and for some reason nobody says anything. Also I managed to keep the same part-time job I had in high school threw sophomore year of college just by going home one a month and working a 4 hr shift. Which I sometimes with very short notice.
That’s the same case I’m in. We jump around between about 10-18 employees. Mostly part time, mostly high school kids. We/I used to let them drag out getting their paperwork into me for a few weeks before it turned into ‘look, I need it by tomorrow or I’m taking you off the schedule until you finish it…at least get me [the stuff I absolutely need to cut a check]’ and then a week or two later I’d nag them for the rest of it and it would start over.
As I’ve gotten better and more in compliance with various laws, I hand them a checklist on their first day which basically states what they need to do and when it needs to be done by. Section 1 of your I-9 today (since I usually meet people on their first day), in fact, why don’t you just fill it out right now if you can. Everything else, including verification/eligibility documents in three days. As long as their I-9 documents (ie ID etc) are correct the rest can usually be taken care of right there. Usually it’s just little things. Did you really mean to put down 1 allowance for state and 21 for fed or is the two just scribbled out? Or, my favorite “yes, I know I told you to make sure to sign all these forms, but you need to fill them all in as well” Every fucking time with that one. Seriously. We hire probably 20-30 people a year and I’ll bet 15 of them will only sign their W-4s and not write their name/address/SSN on them. C’mon get with the program.
Did you look for him on Facebook? Anytime we deal with a “wacky” person at work, they’re barely out the door before Cindy (an employee) has their Facebook/Instagram/whatever page up on her monitor.
#nosecrets
Not sure about the name and address, but the SSN and W-4 are also irrelevant.
Great! I’d like to park in the space where your car is. Please move it.
I have had an employee disappear twice since I have been at this company. In both cases it was very out-of-character for them not to at least call. In the first case it turned out that that employee had been arrested for driving without insurance (her work was impeccable but her personal life tended toward chaos) and had no way to contact us for the first 2 days. She had a family member call for her on day 3, just getting under the wire.
The second case was much more recent and, after 2 days of leaving messages on cell and home phones, I did some Google research. I found contact information for several of his friends and family and finally contacted a sister. She had no idea he was out of touch but contacted their mother who confirmed he was in the hospital in a near comatose state. With that info I was able to work with HR to keep his job open until he was able to return a few weeks later. Without Google, he likely would have been terminated for job abandonment.
Heh - this was pre-Facebook, and I can’t freakin’ remember his name otherwise I’d look him up right now on FB and LinkedIn. Sigh.
I was in the military and if someone didn’t show up for work, it could be considered AWOL (Absent With Out Leave) or even desertion. They could go to jail. One big difference between the military and most civilian jobs. I’d start making inquiries after they were late about an hour. Send someone up the barracks/dorm; call their home phone; call next of kin, etc. Usually it was something like overslept or confusion about which shift they were on or even that they were put on some type of detail and I wasn’t informed. However I did have 3 people go AWOL on me. All of them young guys shortly after basic and technical training.
The guy that I replaced in my current civilian job was a very good worker but didn’t show up for two days. My boss went to his home and found him dead. Evidently a heart attack.
I’m having trouble finding anything from the IRS stating that I don’t need to get an SSN from a new employee. In fact, even trying to find something, and I’ve been down this road before, leads me to statements like “You’re required to get each employee’s name and SSN” and “Also, every employee is required to complete Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification, to establish that they are legally eligible to work in the U.S., and that the SSN is required to be reported on that form” or “Since the employee is required to furnish Form W-4 to the employer on commencement of employment, Form W-4 may be used for the initial solicitation of the employee’s SSN”
Keeping in mind these employees don’t have religious objections, they aren’t non-resident aliens, in most cases (some, yes, but not most) they haven’t lost their card or forgot their number…they just don’t feel like hanging out for a few minutes to take care of this.
Yes, I understand that if I don’t have a W-4 I can withhold as if they’re single and have no allowances, but without a SSN, where does that money go? I’m sure the IRS will figure it out, but in the mean time I get a fine that I have to jump through a bunch of hoops to take care of. Also, as noted above (and I never thought about that part), it’s required for section one of the I-9 which has to be filled out between being hired and the first day of work, so I’d likely catch it at that point. The snag usually happens when they choose to use it as an authorizing document (section 2 of the I-9) at which point I’m legally required to physically see the original copy of it.
Having said all that, I’ve yet to find any clear cut way to get around someone not having a SSN. Certainly not something directly from the IRS anyways.
TL;DR, W-4 and SSN are relevant, when come back bring cites
It’s the same for civil servants. If you’re more than 3 hours late and they can’t reach you, they call the cops. If the cops can’t find, you, it gets escalated in some way. It’s possible they list you as a missing person. We’ve never had any civilians go AWOL so those details have never been trotted out. While no one’s disappeared, we’ve had a depressing number die withing 6 months of retirement.
I think I’ve told this story before but we had a employee commit suicide on her lunch break. It was a summer Friday and long lunches weren’t unheard of. She’d gone over to a nearby parking garage that we had access to and jumped off the top of the building.
The police got to our work building a couple hours later but none of us knew what had happened, the story was hit by a car which is common. Tourists aren’t used to Chicago traffic and also watching for pedestrians.
At a job I had some years ago (1970’s), the supervisors asked their employees what they would want the supervisor to do if the employee was late (by, say 15 or 30 minutes or whatever). Should the supervisor try to call the employee to ask what’s the matter? Maybe the employee just overslept? Or is sick, too sick to even call in? Or dead?
Overwhelmingly, the employees agreed: YES, if I don’t show up to work on time, CALL ME!
Note, this was a huge organization, but it was just our own shift supervisors in our department doing this. It wasn’t like it was some corporate-wide HR policy or anything like that, that I know of.
I had a coworker for about 25 years (roughly) who stopped coming to work. The first day, the supervisor simply assumed that he’d taken the day off & the “paper trail” had somehow gotten garbled. There was a calendar that you were supposed to sign, but lots of people just ignored it. On the second day, it was just assumed that he’d taken the whole week. He had many weeks of accumulated vacation - hadn’t taken a day for years. Well, the second week passed. The third week passed. After 5 or 6 weeks, the supervisor started putting him in for sick time.
Because the supervisor was supposed to investigate, but did not, on the very first day, every subsequent day that the guy didn’t turn up was just digging a deeper hole.
Eventually, we were able to reach the employee’s son at his home. He listened patiently for a minute and said, “He doesn’t work there any more.” and closed the door.
I still miss the guy from time to time. I bought him a bottle of Coke (He loved the stuff.) a week or so before he left. He had a really rough time in Vietnam. He was the sort who would sit in a room with you for 12 hours and never say a word unless you spoke first.