Sounds like that’s true at enough places that one thing I’d damn sure do before I gave notice, if I were working for a private employer, would be to wipe any personal files off my computer. Clearly you might not get the chance, once they knew you were leaving.
If I was working in a place that would fire you the day you gave notice and not even pay the 2 weeks, then I would give no notice and leave my resignation sitting on my desk (or open locker or whatever) for them to find the next day. Or maybe not.
It is very unusual. But I have just finished school and she knew that I was going to school full time (occasionally I had to adjust my schedule for classes, etc.) and so it was a natural progression from there to “Now i’m looking”. My degree is something very different from what i am working at.
I have no way of really knowing that they won’t let me go. BUT, I do a ton of work around here and my coworkers rely on my heavily. That doesn’t mean I am indispensible but that they have no work-related reason to fire me, and I am making sure not to give them one (i.e., I am still working hard, still doing lots).
Part of what helps me is it’s fairly likely after I leave they won’t fill the position again, so they want to hang onto me as long as possible.
I am in a very specific situation. Normally I wouldn’t tell.
Meh. I’ve been fired from lots of jobs. Good ones too. I’ve always found a better one (or at least one that paid at least as well).
Unless you’re like the vice president of a division or a CEO and your contract stipulates you have to create some sort of transition plan, why give your employer more than 2 weeks notice? My employer demands 4 weeks notice, but that’s hardly enforceable anyway.
More to the point, why does anyone think that their company would let them just sit around for more than 2 weeks just hanging out collecting a check? They aren’t going to give you more work to do
In theory you’re supposed to spend those two weeks passing your domain knowledge to your coworkers and finishing up any projects you currently have.
Thing is, some jobs at least have plenty of work to do. My job: If I gave my notice today and left on the 23rd, well we have an event that would have just finished up, and I know there will be a ton of post-event work to do, and no one knows it better than I do.
Not that I wil be staying for that reason! At this point I would be ready to leave anytime after the event! 
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I told my manager that I was looking for another job. We were bleeding people left and right and the writing was on the wall for the company. I told him I was going and recommended that he start looking immediately if he wasn’t already. Several years later I ended up working for him at another company, where he outright offered me a management position with no interview (I turned it down).
When I left IT back in 2001*, I gave a one month notice. Things were deteriorating fast and it pretty much jammed a cork in the amount of management shit I had to put up with. As it was, I was done with everything 3 days before my scheduled last day and we mutually agreed I would be done that day.
*Temporarily as it turns out, since I got back into IT in 2012.
It’s a reasonable fear, since employer’s free to do as it likes and a manager with authority may not be pleased.
As for other comments, please note that what most laypeople consider a “contract” isn’t in fact a contract with enforceable terms, and the employer won’t legally be obligated to pay to the end of the notice period you offer (just like in 99% of cases, it’s free to change the terms of your employment, your duties, your pay, and let you go at any time with no reason or any reason). Whether they do or don’t pay out the notice period doesn’t mean they’re legally obligated; it’s not up to the worker to unilaterally dictate how long (s)he’s to be employed (and that’s in effect what you’re doing if you believe the employer’s obligated to employ you beyond a given moment or pay you for the X weeks or months if they let you go when they get notice that you intend to quit as of Y).
“He then transferred me from a store in an affluent suburban area to an urban hell-hole, where the last store manager had quit …”
So your boss is a passive-aggressive asshole with little character/integrity. Not even a little uncommon; in fact, it’s quite common.
“In those six months I experienced a lock-down due to a gang war in the parking lot, an armed robbery of the pharmacy, a junkie pulling a knife on the pharmacist who wouldn’t fill an obviously forged prescription, an either drunk or mentally ill woman disrobing and defecating in the store aisles, and worst of all a drug abusing pharmacist who tried to blame the clerks for the drugs he stole.”
Not sure why you’re telling us all this, but as you know, you’re free to leave at any time without notice. (Even if you have what in fact is an enforceable contract – and most people outside top executives or academia or a union job do not – then the employer’s recourse would be to sue you for supposed damages, and vice versa if they let you go when a contract did not entitle them to except under X terms/conditions.)
Alberta, and after checking this site:
http://work.alberta.ca/documents/Termination-of-Employment-and-Temp-Layoff.pdf
there are different amounts of notice the employer must give you depending on how long you’ve been there. Note the section below that talking about termination pay; they do in fact have to pay you out for those amounts of time if they decide to sweep you out the door that day. It looks like you could be entitled to up to 8 weeks termination pay if you’ve been there long enough.
Alberta is known to have rather weak employment laws too, and you don’t have that much protection compared to other provinces. I can’t imagine this is the only place with rules about termination pay.
And yes that pay doesn’t happen if they fire you for just reasons like those listed on the site. But if they try to go that route thay must convince the regulators it’s true… whereas when firing and paying you out they don’t have to give any reason for the termination at all.
I gave a two week notice when I worked at a jewelry store once a long time ago and they let me go the same day. They had a theory that a no-longer-committed employee might steal from them, so letting someone go when they gave notice was a ‘normal’ practice for them.
I have recently alerted my supervisor in my department that I am going to interview for a position in another department. I had to have my supervisor’s permission to interview, which she gave.
I would have told her if I were going outside the company, even though I don’t have any obligation to do so, because I have worked there for well over 10 years and wouldn’t have wanted to leave her on short notice and unprepared. I felt it was safe to do this as we have had a good long-term relationship. If we did not have a good relationship, I might not have alerted her.
I don’t doubt there’s work to do. What I doubt is that your company would want to continue having you be the one doing that work.
I worked for a company that felt the same way. As soon as you said you were leaving, they kicked you to the curb. Based on that, I gave them no notice when I found a new job - which they felt was a huge betrayal even when I pointed out a coworker had been kicked to the curb the week before after giving them a month’s notice.
I forgot to mention another reason I was thinking of telling them sooner–I’d like to leave open the possibility of teaching for them as an adjunct a year from the date I leave. (New job won’t allow outside employment for the first year). I figure this is more likely if we’re not enemies.
Iunno. I’ll probably do like a month or six weeks. If they fire me I can swallow the cost if it’s just that long. (Plus I’ve discovered I’d probably qualify for unemployment during the notice period, assuming they didn’t try to trump up something as a reason to fire me other than the notice.)
That kind of encapsulates it for me. I don’t really feel much loyalty to organizations, but I do feel loyalty to individuals. If the folks who work somewhere are awful to me, I’ll give them minimal notice. If the folks are good to me, I’ll give them plenty of notice.
And typing that makes me realize I was kind of lying before when I said I’ve given tons of notice for all my jobs in the last 15 years. I briefly worked as a delivery driver for a local company that contracted with restaurants. My pay worked out to minimum wage on the best nights, and actually losing money on the worst nights. They managed this by treating their workers as contractors rather than wage workers, although I’m pretty sure they would’ve lost a lawsuit on the matter. So since they insisted on calling me a contractor and paying me next to nothing, the notice I gave them was, after cashing out one night, “Thanks, and that was my last shift.” They made all hurt-puppy-eyes at me, but they were awful to me, so I saw no reason to give them anything more than the minimum.
An important point is that giving notice you are quitting is not cause for firing. So if they do fire you, you are eligible for unemployment. Obviously that’s less than your current salary, but it’s money you get paid for doing nothing.
That’s exactly what I did when the jewelry company let me go. I applied for unemployment benefits.
Unemployment helped me for the first 6 months of nursing school, and when that ran out, I got a nurses aid job in a hospital. So even though being fired upon giving notice was a bad way to treat people, in this case their actions gave me a nice benefit I wasn’t expecting.
Yes, I just learned this. How much do unemployment benefits amount to? Is it half of your salary, IIRC? That might make it easier to give notice earlier if there’s a risk they’ll do something crazy.
Nevermind that last question–I’ve found the answer. The cap in my state puts it at about a third of what I presently make.
I think you will find that is not a universal rule. Certainly in most places voluntarily resigning is cause for denial of unemployment benefits.
If it’s just for a couple of weeks, they might not bother to contest the claim.