Except that they are. Usually many people.
Nonetheless, the people take advantage of at-will terminations, so it’s perfectly ethical to work there, judge them, decide you don’t like them or what they’ve created as a work environment, job type, etc. and leave.
Still don’t know of any non-human fully functioning corporations, but when one shows up, I don’t think anything is going to get better. :eek:
I’m an engineer. When I was first applying for engineering jobs, things weren’t moving very fast, so I applied for and got a job at a junior college. I started in the spring (March, I think) and as it happened, one of my coworkers was married to a man who worked in a plant engineering group. He helped me put the right buzzwords on my application and introduced me to the man who eventually hired me. I left right after Thanksgiving.
I know I didn’t get some interviews because of my degree and resume - they figured (correctly) that I’d leave if something better came along. Obviously, the college didn’t care, tho they weren’t too happy when I gave my notice. But I sure wasn’t going to hang around when I was offered 36% more pay.
I am somebody, and I am deliberately talking about pregnancy because it is in fact a situation where you accept a job knowing that you’re going to leave in a relatively short and defined time frame, and it’s ILLEGAL for the employer to make a decision based on that information. You’re claiming that it is unethical for you not to disclose information that the company cannot legally or ethically use to make an employment decision, and I disagree that withholding information that a company can only use for illegal and unethical purposes is itself unethical.
“Lying by omission” implies that you have a duty to reveal the information, and you haven’t justified your claim that duty actually exists. If the company wants to make a proper employment contract guaranteeing me employment for X time on one side with me guaranteeing to work for X time on the other, that would be different. But virtually no business operates that way, especially for ‘bad job’ positions.
The point is that if the company withholds that information, you’re not making an informed decision about working there, and they’re deliberately deceiving you in that way to get you to work there temporarily. And yet the law and ordinary business ethics state that is just fine, and even an ethical obligation in most cases.
Feelings are your own responsibility, the fact that you might have fi-fis about what someone does doesn’t make what they do unethical.
And the law and quite a few other people argue that the company has a ficudiary duty NOT to disclose such information. And in practice the vast majority of companies give exactly as little notice as required by law (which in federal law is a flat zero for any employee who has not worked there for six months of the last 12).
It absolutely does, being ethical does not mean being self-destructive. For example, if Jane’s abusive husband asks if you know where she is, it’s absolutely ethical to outright lie to protect her.
And I am stating that business relationships and dating relationships are so different that the analogy is invalid, and that the practice of attempting to equivocate between business and family/romantic relationships is manipulative and disgusting. And look, right here…
You do EXACTLY what I’m calling out as manipulative and disgusting. A company is not a romantic partner, period. If they were, they would be an abusive, manipulative partner attempting to guilt trip someone into a one-sided relationship.
Also, to make it clearer what might be lost in the point-by-point response: US business ethics generally includes the idea that a corporation has a fiduciary duty to shareholders to maximize shareholder profits. Because of this, it is actually unethical for a business to do things like provide advance notice of layoffs as that could result in lost profits, and in fact obligates employees of the business to lie and/or disseminate about impending layoffs if an employee asks. I argue that an individual has a fiduciary duty to their self and their family just as a corporation does to shareholders, and that as such the individual should follow similar ethical rules when dealing with a company.
This means that they are in fact ethically obligated not to disclose impending potential future job ending in exactly the same way that a corporation is.
Being honest is good, but I would suggest that you do otherwise.
I had a friend of a friend that I knew that worked some place in retail for an abusive boss… (he hit people, not that unusual among my group of friends when I was younger. We were all treated like trash when I was growing up.)
He finally gave his two weeks, and left without another job because the guy locked him and his coworkers in the store without a way to get out until “inventory was done.”
He started getting interviews, but couldn’t ever land the job at the end. Finally, he had his brother’s wife, who was a lawyer, called the guy asking for a reference to hire him for a job. She told him that the job paid super well, and they were excited to have someone. The lawyer recorded the conversation and the guy he used to work for just trashed his ass. Made up all this crap about him that wasn’t true.
The guy and his sister in law sued the ever loving shit out of that guy, and he closed his sporting good store after that. I don’t know how much he recovered from the guy because I moved.
If someone sues you, the burden of proof is on you if you spoke of anything negative. You would have to back it up in court.
Luckily, I’m in Pennsylvania.
What if someone called you up for a reference, and said that the call was being recorded because all calls that the person makes from work are recorded? Would you answer the same way that you would have without?
I am in no way suggesting that you lie to people about your past employees. I am just curious how that would change.
We grew up in Texas, so you could record any phone call you were on. You couldn’t record other people’s phone calls without permission.
ETA: I hit send too soon. I had the same thing happen to some slave trader I used to work for in Texas too. I got the idea from this old friend of a friend. They trashed me as well, all lies, because they were mad that I was leaving. I recorded that call and played it back for his boss (I was in the security industry at the time.)
They gave me a months worth of pay after I left so I wouldn’t sue them as well.
That’s not an exemption by employee , it simply means that those who have not worked there for six months of the last twelve as well as those who average less than 20 hours a week ( both considered “part-time” under the WARN act) aren’t counted toward the various thresholds. If a company has 200 full- time employees who have worked more than six of the last twelve months and 100 part-timers at a single site the employer is covered by the act- and all those affected by a plant closing/mass layoff are entitled to notice, even part-timers who weren’t counted when determining whether the 100 employee threshold to meet the definition of “employer” or the threshold for a “plant closing” or “mass layoff” was reached.
I’d hang up. If the person wanted to buy me lunch, I’d accept the invitation.
Why do you fight someone getting unemployment?
**
It seems a little sketchy to just hang up on someone because they are recording you. What are you trying to hide?
Not sure what province you are in, but in Ontario that is illegal. If someone gives notice (and it is outside the probationary period in the contract) you can tell them not to bother coming in, but you are still on the hook for the notice period pay.
My unemployment compensation rates take a hit. It costs me money.
And another point or two …
Sure, there are a lot of companies that are uncaring, corrupt nightmares. But not all.
And just because someone or something is bad to others is not grounds for me to be bad to them. One of the key things that makes a good person a good person is how they treat such people.
I’m not hiding anything, which is why I do not want to be recorded.
Jeez, that’s kind of a dark way to look at things.
Also: pretty much what I came here to say.
Answering for myself- I live and work in a one-party state and I just assume my phone calls are either being recorded or that there is a third party listening. ( since it happens at least once a week) So being told that a call is being recorded wouldn’t make a difference.
I think you’re getting two things a little mixed up here. The defendant never has the burden of proof - it’s the plaintiff who has to prove his or her case- but it’s only by a preponderance of the evidence. But sometimes a lack of documentation affects the witnesses’ credibility- for example, I’ve ended up supervising a number of people who should have been fired years ago for attendance problems. And if they had been and the manager gave a truthful reference, the manager would have lost the lawsuit. Not because s/he had the burden of proof- but because the employee would of course have testified that there was no attendance problem and presented years of evaluations that mentioned no such problem. And then the manager would have testified that there was an attendance problem but would have been unable to explain why there was no mention on the evaluations, why s/he didn’t follow the employer’s policy re: documenting absences, counseling, disciplinary action etc. And the inability to explain those lapses tend to make people believe that maybe you’re not being truthful about the absences. But maybe none of that would have happened if the evaluations has been truthful about the attendance problem - and I don’t just mean maybe the manager would have been believed. I mean maybe no lawyer is willing to take the case to begin with, or it gets dismissed before trial.
A bad recommendation by itself doesn’t mean you’d lose the case. If everything you said was true, then you’d likely come out fine (minus the lawsuit hassles). So if you said he was always late and did sloppy work but had the timecards and performance reviews to back it up, then you’d be okay. But making up lies will definitely cost the company big time since that’s slander with easy demonstrated financial damages.
Giving a bad recommendation opens the company up to a lawsuit. Making up lies opens the company up to damages.
I see three different cases here:
Case 1: You have two job offers, but one starts one or two weeks later. In which case, it would be unethical to accept the one that starts earlier and just work for that short time.
Case 2: You have a solid job offer, and at least one very hopeful job possibility - that is, you’ve had at least two interviews at the second job. In that case, the thing to do is to call the second job, say “Hey, I have this other job offer, but I’d much rather work for y’all” You will either get the offer from the preferred company in a day or two, or recommendation that you take the first offer.*
Case 3: You have a job offer, but you’d rather work somewhere else. However, you’ve not gotten more than one interview anywhere else. Take the job offer. Your plans at this point are pipe dreams, not solid plans. Sure, you might get an offer, but you might end up searching for another 6 months for a better job. Take the bird in hand.
*Advice gleaned from employment advice columns not personal experience.
Fuck, Canada is awesome. The last three jobs that I gave notice to that I was leaving fired me for giving notice. I had to move the last three times I gave notice, since I am one of the Poors that have to rent and the landlord wanted the house back to either sell or move back into.
Moving sucks, and it sucks more when you have to do without two weeks of pay on top of it. You never get the deposit back until the last days of the thirty days they have to give it to you, so you have to pony up for more deposits and first and last months rent when you move before you can get your other stuff back from the last landlord.