WD, That sucks. I always thought a proper/orderly firing is supposed to be one of HR's areas of competence. No?

So is anyone asking the question how your HR failed to properly fire ***y?
It would suck even more if this or something similar happens again. Incompetence tends to be expensive to a business.

Esel-If I understand the story, HR didn't fire the employee, the mgt did but for the "wrong" reason. If they would have fired employee for the habitual tardiness, with the proper chain of write ups, the UI would have been denied.

I still think they have a case but that depends on how vicious the company attorneys are about it.

We are a small company. No one has any dedicated position, just delegated responsibilities. We all wear many hats. This was a situation where we managers discussed it and all assumed lying was a legitimate cause for dismissal. We were surprised that she even applied for unemployment beneifts. I mean, it seems so obvious, doesn't it? That shows how naive we were to use common sense.
Proposed new handbook entries to be discussed with our atty:

Grounds for immediate dismissal :

Any activity that is prohibited by Federal or State law

Lying to or attempting to deceive a supervisor in any way

Withholding any information about another employees’ intent to do harm to the company (ie: knowing another employee is talking about stealing a client)

Lying on a job application (we’ll have to develop an application that asks the right questions, i.e. “Have you ever been arrested.”)

Disobeying a lawful and work related order from a superior

wd--If you are interested I could ask my wife to suggest some other policies that may be helpful to your company.

Obviously just suggestions but the attorneys could figure out how to apply them in legal speak.

PM me if you would like.

EDIT-I don't want to overstep boundaries, just trying to help.

It is a two way street -while this particular example seems unfair to the employer keep in mind that for every $hitty employee like this one is an equal number of $hitty employers that don't take care of their employees.

OK, so playing devil's advocate here. Was this person really a ****ty employee? I know you said he/she showed up late for work a few times. You make reference to one incident 2 months ago. Did the employee stay late on the days he/she showed up late? I haven't been in the workforce for 20 something years, so I had no idea showing up a bit late was such a big deal. My friends who work for companies seem to come and go whenever they seemingly feel like it, with no repercussions. As for the lying part, perhaps the person is just prone to lying. This may or may not affect their ability to be a good employee.

Just throwing it out, since everyone is dog piling on this person just for showing up late a few times. People are human, after all.

I don't think it's enough to simply put reasons for being fired in the employee manual. You should go another step and have each employee sign a statement that they have been given a copy of that particular page of the manual.

You don't think that being late habitually, and then 1 1/2 hrs late, and then lying about it, and taking unemployment does not constitutue being a s***ty employee? If not, then what is?

I was just looking for clarification.

I'm with Wdfifteen on this one. The company was in the right, but workman's comp boards and the like look at employers as evil Turn of the Century political machine bosses who run small towns and rob from the poor.

Excuse us for providing jobs, which also means firing the employees who are either adversarial or incompetent. This particular employee absolutely had to be fired, no question in my mind. The unfortunate thing is that you have to almost force them to quit or seriously take away their hours to make them irrelevant.

With due respect, I find employers who do the "sign that you've read this rule about consistently coming to work on time" (or some other common sense) to be signaling ineffective management and lack of mutual respect.

The unwritten message is they can't get employees to take the company or their work seriously enough to get there. Instead, management rolls out communications and rules driven by lowest common denominators. People doing a good job will feel insulted by being made to sign such a piece of paper and their work and satisfaction will take a dive.

Management may want to ask themselves, "What is the real problem" or "Why am I having to do this?" If they are truly interested, they may want to ask the employees what the real problem is and be ready for something that's not news to the foot soldiers, may be pretty tough to for them to say and could be difficult for management to hear.

As always, YMMV.

How can you say that, without knowing the full story? Perhaps this employee was the most productive employee at WD's company. Would you say the same thing, knowing that was the case?

I don't get all the hubbub about being exactly prompt when showing up at work. Stuff happens. People have lives outside of their jobs. Perhaps they stay late, or even extra late, for showing up a bit tardy. There are all sorts of factors at play here, which have not been divulged.

As a corporate outsider, that is absolutely my take on this.

In today's world you simply have to CYA. Lawyers need to eat, too.

I would be willing to bet most if not all large employers have new hires sign documents that they understand and received a copy of the employee standards.

wdfifteen's company may not be that big but they still need to hold their employees accountable. Unfortunately, this means that even the god employees may have to be reprimanded for similar behavior as the crappy ones.

You can't let your good buddy Jerry come in late 5 times a month and then write up Samson for the same thing. Will Jerry be ticked? Sure but too bad.

This comes right from my wife and is the way her managers handle discipline--Don't do ANYTHING until you talk to her.

motion-I respect you but I think you are completely wrong.

If you let employees come and go as they please how will know who will be there and when. You can't run a business like that

Sure, things happen and people are human. I understand that. I had been late a few times as well but not habitually late.

That's why a company needs an attendance policy which lays out exactly what will occur when one is late or are absent.

Unless a person is running a totally laid back workplace where the owner doesn't care if they succeed, you need to have policies in place.

Quickest way to get fired is to lie to me. Every employee is told that, by me, before starting work on their first day.

If there is a problem, tell me, and we'll fix it. Try to hide it from me, it festers.

Lie to me, once, about anything, and you are fired on the spot.

There has, however, been allowances made for a bit of deception if it is part of an hilarious practical joke.:D

Sorry Patrick. I had my own thing happen today. Hired someone last week to do inventory: taking things out of boxes, counting them, putting them back in. He started on Wednesday, worked Thursday, had a family emergency on Friday. I said, no worries and I'll see you on Monday.

I get this email this morning.

Shaun

After a series of sleepless nights I have to admit that I am overwhelmed and I don't believe that I am the man for this job. I apologize but this position has caused me enough anxiety that I have reconnected with a therapist to deal with lingering issues. Again I apologize but this is just too much for me. Thank you for the opportunity.

He's 25.

I think Apple, Facebook, Linked In, etc etc would differ with you. They give their people a lot of leash.

Besides, what's the difference between showing up 15 minutes late, or spending 15 extra minutes per day BSing at the water cooler? I just don't get it. It reeks of manager/owner/anal/control to me.

Ok, so maybe you aren't completely wrong. ;)

I don't know the policies of the companies you listed but obviously they are successful so what they do must work for them as far as tardiness. Maybe they don't have issues with people not showing up for work.

In this case, the reason for termination was wrong. Mgt. should have given the employee another write up/suspension as the third strike. 4th strike you are gone.