I have been merchandising magazines part-time for a company for over 6 years. Since May I have been working extra stores on Fridays, because the supervisor can’t find anyone to work the stores. These have been 10 to 11 hour days. I can’t take it any longer, but I’m being expected to continue. I do not have a choice but to quit the job. How much notice should I give?
The standard, at least in the US, is two weeks.
If they are truly hurting for employees, you might have some leverage to demand additional pay or benefits or reduced hours - e.g. demand a $3 per hour raise or else you will give two weeks notice.
Standard notice is typically 2 weeks. If you don’t want to burn any bridges, that’s what you should do.
Have another job lined up first. The answer to a two week notice is often being fired.
Or just leave, it’s likely your employer would let you go without notice if it suited them.
Sure sounds to me like you might have some leverage for a raise or benefits. Reduced hours (as robert_columbia suggested) is unlikely, since they’re already overloaded with work.
Or you could tell your boss you ain’t gonna work the extra hours, and if he doesn’t like it he can fire you.
Then he can decide whether he’d rather have you to work X hours, or have you work 0 hours.
Note that refusing to work the hours and getting fired over it could affect whether you’re eligible for unemployment or not depending on your state. In other words, refusing to do your work could be equivalent to quitting, and you typically can’t get unemployment if you quit.
Woah! Wait a second before you quit.
First of all, I assume since you are part-time that Fridays do not put you over 40 hours but you may still be due overtime. Colorado it is OT after10 work hours and your state may be after 8 hours. If they find out that you are time and a half after a certain number of hours on Friday they may cut you back.
Or significantly changing required hours either up or down could be construed as constructive discharge. YMMV.
There is no standard or requirement for giving notice. You can easily quit, walk out the door and that’s it.
The custom is to give two weeks notice. However, the custom is for the benefit of the soon-to-be ex-employer and not the employee giving notice. It allows the soon-to-be ex-employer to advertise for the position, hire someone and have them trained before the employee giving notice actually leaves the job, providing the soon-to-be ex-employer chooses not to immediately terminate your employment anyway after giving notice.
In blunt language, when you give the customary two week notice, you become indentured to your employer for two weeks. If you want a nice reference from your soon-to-be ex-employer you may just have to do your job and that’s it. It’s not uncommon for your soon-to-be ex-employer will be a real jerk to you, especially if you need their reference somewhere down the employment road.
In thirty-five years working experience, I’ve never had that happen to me or to anyone I know. I’ve heard about it a lot, sure, but I’ve never seen it.
Depends on the company. Some companies require a 15 or 30-day notice in order for you to be eligible for rehire, which is important when your next employer calls the company and asks the question. That doesn’t mean they are required to give you the two weeks, and can ask you to leave immediately. In that case, a person should always keep a copy of the notice letter, and any termination letter, so the next employer can see what transpired. If the company has a policies manual or an HR department, the OP should check to see what the rules are.
Also be wary that throwing your weight around, even when it is legitimate, can shoot you to the top of the boss’s layoff list so that when budget cuts come around next summer, you’re the first out the door and he can keep the sheeple that keep their heads down.
It absolutely depends on how attached you are to this job.
If you’re on the verge of just flat-out quitting because you’re assigned too many hours, it can’t hurt to tell your boss that unless he agrees to your desired schedule you’ll quit. Then your boss might fire you on the spot, or he might demand you work the extra hours and you will quit, or he will agree to reduce your hours. A sneaky boss will agree to cut your hours, and then treat you like crap in revenge.
It all depends on how much you need this particular job, and how much this particular boss needs you, and how much of a dick he is. Worst case for you is you have to quit, and can’t get unemployment. That’s exactly the same as just up and quitting.
It’s a lot more common in the corporate sector when the employee has access to sensitive files or customer information. The company I worked at from 2000-2011 handled a lot of sensitive files, including a lot of GSA (government) contracts. Anyone who turned in a “two weeks notice” was thanked, given a handshake, and escorted back to their desk to clean it out.
A disgruntled employee – or, for that matter, an enterprising one – can do a lot of damage and steal a lot of sensitive info in two weeks time. My company’s approach to the matter was to continue paying the employee for the time they would have worked, and let them go home paid for two weeks.
The “bad reference” isn’t much of an issue, at least not outside very small companies. The interaction - if there is any, is usually with the HR department and it’s just time worked there and last position.
Saying bad things about an employee to another company (I doubt they would even ask about anything in particular) is not usually done, as it opens up the company to a possible lawsuit. It’s just not worth it.
That makes sense, and I believe you. I’ve worked in several environments where we dealt with sensitive information as database administrators and designers. As much as we tried to lock things down and back things up, anyone in our team could have brought us or our clients to our/their knees. It might have been as simple as slipping a couple of lines of code in a stored procedure. God knows, they were imaginative enough.
This was during the hot software days when companies were poaching from each other left and right, and it wasn’t all that unusual for someone to say that they found another position. We appreciated the heads-up. It would have been counterproductive to give them the bum’s rush before they had a chance to pass along what they had been working on, and we found someone to fill the gap they were leaving.
We were a small team and it was easy to tell when someone was disgruntled, or worse, disgruntled and hostile. There was one person we let go with no warning, the security guard and the whole bit, but this was very unusual.
The whole point being, I think managers intimidating workers so that they’re scared of giving two weeks notice is way overblown. Even given the number of idiot managers out there, playing “Oh, no, you’re not quitting because you’re fired” is just flat plain stupid.
I just turned in my computer and ID badge today at a very large corporation that I worked at for 12+ years. I gave one week notice. I think that they will survive. My former boss did mention a few times that it is unusual to only give one week notice. It seemed that they like two weeks notice to get all of the HR administrative crap done at a leisurely pace.
A number of years back, a coworker gave his two weeks notice hours before his previously scheduled two week vacation. That was kind of shocking, but the company survived.
Our company also has a policy that if you give two weeks notice that you are taking a job with a direct competitor that you are walked out the door that day.
Concur. When I gave my notice at the bank, my boss said, “As you know, standard procedure is to call security and have you escorted out of the building.”
That’s just the way things were done to protect the bank from people who might through malice or disregard cause problems. As it happened, she couldn’t do that with me because on her own admission she couldn’t run the department without me so I was going to have to work my notice out so I could train somebody to do at least some of the stuff I did. Didn’t bother me any.
The company I work for now will absolutely do this, and HAS done this. If you give 2 weeks notice, you are told to pack up your desk.
Another company I worked for, I gave my 2 weeks notice when I found another job, and that night, my supervisor made my life HELL. I was fuming when quitting time came around, and I did not go back the next day. Took a well-deserved 2 week break between jobs. 