Right. My friend let her teaching certification lapse !! and honestly her employer could have suspended her on the spot. But they did give her one chance to get it right, and she did. She did what she needed to to make it right and didn’t put it off or lie about it.
Add me to the chorus. You have no case, no reason for a case and if you pursue it, well, just don’t. This is all on you.
Thieves would be my first choice, but assuming there are none of those about, yes, I agree.
I agree with what everyone has said so far – that technically, you don’t have a case.
Although you are probably right that they needed to lay off people and were just waiting like vultures for someone to make a mistake so they could go in for the kill. Which sucks for you because now you might not be able to receive unemployment compensation.
I went through a similar situation. My employer fell upon hard times and needed to cut costs. I was the longest-serving employee and made the most money, so I was a prime target. I made one little mistake (although not nearly as big as the mistake you made, and I did not lie about it) and I was gone. Like you, I had a previously exemplary record. It was clear to me that I was laid off, because in the past, my employer was always very forgiving of small inconsequential mistakes, so it made no sense why should would have fired me all of a sudden. And what sucked for me is that I could not get unemployment because she had that one tiny mistake to prove that I was fired for cause.
It is very hard to be let go in this way, after being an exemplary employee for so long. In good times, they most likely would have let it slide, but you walked right into their trap. I know the sense of regret and I kicked myself in the butt big time for being so stupid.
I’m sorry for what happened to you. I can definitely understand your sense of anger and unfairness.
No, they most likely would not have let it slide. No company I have ever dealt with was willing to blow off state alcohol regs, because it opens you up to some massively expensive lawsuits. Also, it puts you at serious risk for losing your liquor license. If he’d gotten it renewed sometime in the fall and had it handy to give them in December, they would have known because of the renewal date on the card, but they might have kept him on. Maybe. I wouldn’t bank on it, though. He was a liability.
But seriously, a trap? Puh-leeeze. They gave him five freaking months to get legal, which is twenty chances to take the class. That’s not a trap, that’s bending over backwards to give somebody a chance. Now, if they’d given him one week, knowing that he was going to be on vacation during that week, I might buy that he’d been treated somewhat harshly. But as it is, no. Just no.
So, your employers were willing to cut you a large amount of slack, but not an infinite amount of slack - and you feel this is unfair? Sorry, not feeling a huge amount of sympathy for you on this one. Hope you can find a new job quickly, though.
Are you seriously complaining about your supervisors doing you a favor that put them in some jeopardy legally, and your not taking advantage of it, and then their refusing to do so a second time? When you concede that you lied about it? When you allowed a nebulous “something” to get in the way of what was necessary to do your job and keep your employer out of the glue?
This is a good point. What would have happened to your employer if there had been an inspection? Would you feel responsible for paying their fine, since it would have been entirely your fault?
Back when I worked for CompUSA we were going through some very good times as a company (yeah, it was a while back). During one meeting the manager said something to the effect of “Those of you who miss a lot of Mondays, take breaks for longer than 15 minutes, and are late on a regular basis are going to be the first one to go when the company hits hard times.”
Turns out it was true. The first round of layoffs got most of those people. I jumped ship before the next round of layoffs.
I’d just take it as a learning experience and move on.
Odesio
One silver lining for you: the current state of the economy provides excellent cover when a potential employer asks why you left your last job. “Business was getting slow and they were cutting down everywhere.”
Yeah, you might be unlucky and that employer bothers to check up AND the last place goes into details. But nowadays most places will only confirm the dates that you worked there, your job, and possibly what your salary was.
“Of course, I forgot all about it” WTF ???
If I had been in your shoes, I probably would’ve obsessed about this over my entire vacation and I would’ve taken the course at the first possible opportunity after I got back. Yet you seem to think it is only natural and normal for you to “forget” about this. For six months, even. It really is unforgivable.
While I am in general agreement with everything said so far in this thread, I don’t really agree with this. The employer bears responsibility for ensuring that the people it schedules to work are properly licensed - and I suspect the state ABC would agree when doling out penalties.
For all of Aceospades’ “rather lax” handling of his certificate, I can’t say the hotel looks a hell of a lot better; “lax” doesn’t begin to describe their cavalier attitude towards something that could jeopardize their liquor license.
This page is a State of Delaware FAQ concerning, among other things, the TABS card that is under discussion here. Newly-hired alcohol servers are required to obtain one within 30 days of starting their jobs, and must keep it current to continue to serve legally. Training is free, and the cards are good for four years. Servers are required to have the actual card on their person while working, and employers are encouraged to retain copies of each server’s card for their records.
If the hotel didn’t have its head up its ass, they would know exactly when every server’s card expired and would refuse to schedule them past that date until they saw a new one. Spot checks every now and then to ensure that servers actually have their cards with them might be wise, too. Covers everybody’s butts, and very easy to do.
For whatever reason, though, it sounds like they ask to see cards every so often (as in, a few times per decade) and gently suggest that those with expired cards get them renewed - all the while continuing to let them work. Given what’s at stake for the hotel, that’s pretty damn dumb.
None of this excuses Aceospades’ failure to get it renewed in a timely manner, but it does help explain the “Geez, If I knew it was that important, I’d have made sure to do it,” vibe I get from the OP. I suspect that if the hotel had refused to let him/her work after discovering the expired card, there would have been much less “forgetting” and “things coming up” and Aceospades would have gotten it renewed pretty quickly - loss of income tends to focus one’s energies in a way few other things can.
As things happened, the hotel cut Aceospades a break, which he/she didn’t take advantage of. Hey, we all fuck up from time to time - and this is one of them, unfortunately. Lick your wounds, learn from it, bounce back, and don’t do it again(!)
Wow. Agreeing with others here. You fucked up. They gave you several chances and you just kept blowing it off.
:smack:
Even if they weren’t in the middle of a round of layoffs, I’d have singled you out for firing just for being irresponsible, and worse, dishonest.
The situation is a bummer, but unfortunately there is nothing unfair about it.
This is the fundamental question, and the answer is “yes.” Indeed, lying to someone’s face is one of the few things that is worth firing someone over. Even so, this was not just one slip-up. This was a pretty long list of things that reflect very poorly on you.
[ol]
[li]You let a professional license lapse. This puts your employer at risk and makes you the kind of employee that they don’t want to have. Just because they didn’t remind you about it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t matter. It means they trusted that you were professional enough that they did not need to babysit you. You broke that trust. [/li][li]You were too lazy to renew it the first time. People don’t “forget” stuff that is important to them. You just didn’t bother to renew it. Indeed, I’d bet money that you never really intended to renew it and were counting on it not coming up again. I mean, you carry this thing with you every single day. How could you “forget” it expired for six months?[/li][li]You lied about it. Drop all this “I was ashamed” bullshit. You screwed up and you lied about it. This will kill any career. When you mess up bad at work, the only thing you can do that will help you is admit what you did, apologize, and propose a solution. But you didn’t do this. You thought you were smart enough to tell a lie and make it work. [/li][li]You then managed to be too lazy to make your lie work. The final nail on the coffin. Your company might have been able to overlook your laziness and lies if in the end it worked out and they could plausibly give you the benefit of the doubt. But you were too lazy to even do that! You made it so that they couldn’t ignore what happened. And- not so surprisingly- the didn’t.[/li][/ol]
Bummer. Good luck on the job search.
This is one of my biggest pet peeves as an employer. People like this that actually think they were wronged in some way. To me, your employer deserves thanks for letting you get away with not having the necessary documentation for so long, putting themselves at risk for a fine so you could continue to make a living. You worked for them a while, they trusted you and you let them down. Now you want to know if THEY did something wrong? That is just silly. Perhaps you should send a note of apology for taking advantage of their trust and good faith by blowing off your obligation.
As I read your post I was not totally convinced you would have even handled it to this day if they kept allowing you to work and make excuses.
My point was that the OP suggested the unfairness of letting him go despite the expired license. I thought that it would similarly be unfair for the employer to be penalized for his negligence. And yes, the employer should have a system of ensuring that all employees have up-to-date licenses. (This could be something computerized, or just a paper calendar with each employee’s license expiry date noted.)
I’m also curious as to what “came up” that was more important than renewing your certification.
I have some certifications that I have to renew annually for my job, and I treat going to those classes (as boring as they are) just like any other part of my job. I don’t think of them as something I can go to or not according to my whim or whatever “comes up,” but as going to work (and, in fact, I do actually get paid to go).
From your employers’ pesrspective, you treated them like chumps. You never acted like you cared or took their needs seriously. You blew them off repeatedly, you lied, you just basically let them know that you didn’t think their certification requirements were important.
I can see accidentally letting a card expire. That’s human, and that’s something your employer was evidently willing to cut you some slack about (even though letting it go for more than a year is a little extreme). There’s no excuse, however, for then “forgetting all about it” for six months, even less for lying about it, and even less than that for blowing off the class again because “something came up.”
I used to work in a lot of restaurants. I’ve known my share of bartenders and bar managers. I can say that a lot of joints would have given you a lot less slack than this place did. The fact that you were such a long time employee is probably the reason you didn’t get fired a lot sooner than you did.
Really, you did this to yourself, bro, and all of it was avoidable.
I am very interested in hearing back from the OP.
Ditto. Even if just to say something like “Wow – I honestly did not know the world worked that way. I’m a little smarter today … thanks, all.”
Just wanted to add: my perspective comes as someone who royally screwed the pooch at a “dream job” (ridiculously high pay for relatively minor work) and was out on my ass for cause.
It was a rough road “back” into the workplace (more than a minimum wage “Joe Job”) with that hanging over my head.
I’m back in a good paying job (carreer, actually, economic twists-and-turns aside), and I will not screw that up through negligence, poor work performance, attitude, or lack of due diligence in any professional aspect of my job.
He said typing this from work. :rolleyes:
I’m on my lunch break. Lemme alone.