Unreasonable management - how far can they push it?

In My Humble Opinion
1

Hello.

Posting this in this forum section as I assume the answer would/should be fairly standard or consistent across the board.

So I work at a job whose management is, to put it kindly, the living embodiment of every “horrible boss” story you can imagine or have heard. It’s as though they bought and are using such a book as a “how-to manage” guide. One of them is the office manager, so they run everything.

The examples could go on for pages. For this post, I’ll keep to one. The management style there is basically an ever-moving goal-post, where when something is due to a mistake or misstep on management’s end, the employee is always wrong (even when they’re not), 100%, and “should have known better”. Period. End of story. Management’s failure to do their job always becomes the employees’ problem.

In this case, it’s about how they deal with call-ins (to be late, out for the day, etc).

Once upon a time, there was an office answering machine. Problem was, the managers (two of them) never remembered to check it, so people would call in and they wouldn’t know. Eventually, the answering machine filled up, and they didn’t know because they never checked it. So it became hit-or-miss, to call in and hope someone was there to answer before work hours.

When they realized it was an actual issue, and that they’d have to deal with it (by, you know, checking the answering machine every morning), they decided instead to do away with the answering machine altogether. Their reason was, literally “We forget to check the machine, so it’s not reliable”.

Their new solution was to call either of them on their personal phones, and let them know. One or the other. I’d call one of the managers, and the message always reached the people it needed to.

This worked okay for a short time, until yesterday. I called in, as usual, left my message and then went back to bed (I felt like I’d been run over multiple times by a Mac truck, and then set on fire for good measure).

An hour or so later, the other manager calls wanting to know how come I wasn’t at work. I explained that I was sick, and that I’d called the other manager and left a message with them (it was well before work hours, so there was plenty of notice).

They sounded irritated at this and said “Well they’re not here yet. You need to call both of us and let both of us know. Because if one isn’t here, the other has no way of knowing”.

At this point, I’d like to note that:

  1. I have no idea who is or isn’t going to be there, or at what time.
  2. They text message each other constantly, all day, for all kinds of other reasons. So you’d think it might have occurred to them, being managers and all, to do so with employee call-ins.

Anyway.

So, once again, a failure on management’s part was twisted around to become my problem. Even though the requirement is to contact one or the other, I’m at fault because I should have known to call both of them.

I’m half expecting to be written up for failing to give sufficient notice (they do this, basically, to make it “official” that they were right and the employee was wrong), which is what brings me to my question.

Having explained that, my question is do I have grounds to refuse to sign the write-up if it comes to that? And if they decided to take further measures in response to my refusal, such as termination, do I have any recourse? At what point can it be validly argued that an employer/manager has acted far beyond reasonably?

Thanks.

2

Argued with whom?

Of course you can refuse to sign the write-up. I don’t know why you think that action will have any meaning: they’ll just note that you refused to sign the write-up, and you’ll look intransigent / immature to an outsider.

You can always file a wrongful termination suit, in which case, I hope you are documenting everything. Do you have a union? That would help.

I think you’ve already validly argued that an employer / manager has acted far beyond reasonably, but the only people whose opinions would matter are their bosses (who presumably don’t want to hear it) or a court. In which case, again, you would need to have clear and extensive documentation.

3

If you’re going to push it, ask HR for a copy of the written policies. Do it via email so there is a paper trail.

4

Did you include the cover letter on your TPS report?

5

Well, if it came to a termination case, or unemployment compensation, etc. It’s a big “what-if” and it quite likely won’t come to pass. But, with the way things have been around there lately, I wouldn’t dismiss anything happening at this point.

This is more just me kinda asking things in advance, just in case something did happen, so I wouldn’t be completely caught off-guard and uninformed.

Well I believe there’s the ability to sign, but include a note that you disagree with the write-up, and explain why. I suppose I should have said “refuse to concede to a wrong-doing I didn’t actually commit”, instead of outright not signing it at all.

No Union. I do have some documentation, yes, but not about this particular incident. I’d have the phone record proving that I did in fact contact a manager, and I’m sure there’d be record of my phone message (even if they deleted it) if it ever came to that.

As far as rules in writing from their end? Very little, they do most things verbally; very little in writing. And what is in writing is overruled before long anyway, as they decide they don’t like that rule and change it again anyway.

I have better documentation of the nonsense that goes on there than they do.

Funny enough, you are spot-on about their boss not wanting to hear it. The owner goes full ostrich mode when any complication comes up. Their only concern is the money’s coming in,and they can afford to upgrade to next year’s Mercedes model. They don’t even want to know about any of the issues in the office, which is part of the problem. No one’s managing the management, and so they’re free to pull ridiculous nonsense like this situation (and worse).

I was basically looking for a general answer to “can they actually get away with this nonsense if it ever came to a court case or unemployment situation?”. It likely won’t come to that, but they’ve terminated people for bogus reasons before (have been sued, and lost in every case), so I wouldn’t put anything past them. I just like to be as prepared as possible.

You’ve agreed that I’ve already made a case that they’re acting beyond reasonable, and I suspect anyone would agree.

Thank you for your time/feedback.

6

Since this involves legal advice, let’s move it to IMHO.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

7

Out of curiosity are you saying they fired someone, the person sued and they had to be reinstated or fired someone, said it was for negligence, person appealed and unemployment had to be paid?
Just very different bars.

8

There is no one up there dispensing justice and brimstone on the heads of asshole bosses. Sometimes it’s assholes all the way up.

9

Leaving you with the option of quitting or waiting to get terminated and filing for unemployment.

Bad jobs are like bad relationships - almost all the shit they pull is perfectly legal. And you can’t change them - you have to change your situation.

The good news is that in both situations there are reasonable people out there to have in your life.

10

Hindsight is 20/20. So knowing your work environment is questionable at best, what haven’t you kept a work diary? In it you record every questionable statement/interaction with management, including date (and sometimes time) stamps. It would come in handy about now.

Good luck.

11

I expect the bar for getting unemployment is a lot lower than the bar for collecting in a lawsuit for wrongful termination.

It isn’t likely to be by accident that there is no documentation about policies like reporting sick days. Best you can hope for is to say “can you write me an email that says I have to call in to both managers when I am sick”, and hang onto it. It won’t help the next time; they will just say now you have to reach both managers in person or you need a doctor’s note beforehand or something, but it might help in an unemployment hearing.

ISTM you really have to fuck up to be denied unemployment.

Regards,
Shodan

12

Why are you working here? Why are your coworkers? Generally, the only recourse for shitty managers is to quit and leave them no one to manage.

13

What documentation do you have of this policy? Was it a memo, email, or something else that you can show the policy verbatim? Or was it just something verbal they mentioned in a meeting? You made the distinction that you only had to notify one manager, not both. Do you have that policy in writing? If not, they could easily say they said to call both of them.

The reason it’s important is if they fire you, it will help determine if you get unemployment benefits or not. If they fire you for cause, then you don’t get benefits. If you can actually point to the policy which says you only have to call one manager, then your firing would be without cause and you would get benefits.

14

Or do a half-assed job and hide.

15

In general in the US, to win a wrongful termination lawsuit it has to either be for being in a protected class (race, religion, etc.) or for something really egregious like firing someone for refusing to commit a crime. “My manager was mean to me” or “These policies seem unfair to me” are not remotely close to what you need. Getting denied unemployment generally just requires that you didn’t do something like grossly violate a documented policy, stop showing up, refuse to work, or commit a crime on the job.

16

Yeah, unless you’re a complete moron, getting unemployment due to shitty management is fairly easy.

The only case I’ve ever personally heard of that was appealed and still denied was one I was involved in. New driver hit a parked car and kept driving, didn’t report it. I sure did. He was on probation and was fired for it. Appealed unemployment, lost badly. Judge thought he was a fucking moron, because his defense, exact words, was “I didn’t think it was a big deal”. :rolleyes:

17

My wife won an appeal as representing the company when she showed that the guy had committed barratry (admiralty version not litigation version) at a security company. The person holding the hearing upheld the firing for cause and said it was the only time she had ever heard of barratry being used in California in an unemployment hearing.

18

One thing people often miss is that the unemployment proceedings are not like a court case where appeals are rare. In my state, you file for unemployment, they send a form that essentially asks the employer ‘do you contest this?’ and if they contest it your initial claim is denied. But there’s an automatic appeal to a hearing over the phone (and later in person), the employer has to show up and argue their side - or you have to screw up really badly in stating your case.

19

In the future, since these two managers text each other all day long, why don’t you just text both of them that you are “sick” and will not be able to come in. That should satisfy their dual notification requirement, with one shot.

I’d look for a better job, IIWY.

20

Ah, the bane of many an ancient campaign, the divided command.

You could try to get your two bosses to agree that only one of them is actually your boss, and you only have to report to that one guy. But there’s no particular reason for them to agree to this, because they’re walking chaos magnets and prefer chaos.

So you’re SOL. In the future, email not only your two bosses, but your whole team. That makes it clear that your sick, and doesn’t make your team rely on your chaotic bosses to let them know when someone is sick. Don’t do it for your bosses, do it for your team.

Or wait, are you at a sit down at a desk office job? If you aren’t maybe email isn’t the best then. Isn’t there an office manager type? Somebody who, when the bosses start screaming that Steve isn’t at work can tell them that Steve is in the hospital today.