True story:
After 11 years working as office manager for a medium-sized company, Charlene found a position with another company offering a higher salary and improved benefits. Her future employer wanted her to start in 2 weeks, but her current contract required her to give 4 weeks’ notice.
She went to her employer, explained the situation, and asked to be released from the 4-week notice restriction. Her employer flatly refused. When she explained that the job might not be available to her if she did not start in 2 weeks, her employer said that if she left her position early she would be placed on a no-rehire list, she would not be paid for her remaining paid-time-off, and that she would receive no end-of-the-year bonus. (It was mid-December).
The next Friday was payday. Charlene waited until her paycheck cleared, then stopped coming to work. She never called in or let anyone know about her absence, leaving her former colleagues scrambling to cover her responsibilities. No one in the office ever heard from her after that.
Grapple with the Gray
List two or three reasons to support Charlene’s actions.
List two or three reasons to support the employer’s position.
Is there a way to resolve the stand-off?
Having weighed both sides, who’s right and who’s wrong?
Gray Matters
There’s so much wrong in this story that it’s painful to recount.
If Charlene had worked loyally and faithfully for 11 years, it’s irrelevant that her contract requires her to give a month’s notice. Basic gratitude and social conscience demand that an employer not attempt to hold an employee hostage to the point where she stands to lose a better job option. If, after a decade of work, there has not been sufficient opportunity for advancement, the employer should graciously and gracefully wish the employee well.
Of course, it’s possible that short notice will leave the employer shorthanded. But the civil thing to do is seek some kind of compromise. Perhaps Charlene could come in twice a week, for a few hours each day, or telecommute part-time. Presenting an all-or-nothing ultimatum might be contractually defensible, but it lacks sensitivity, integrity, and appreciation.
It’s understandable that Charlene would want to collect her final paycheck before checking out. But she didn’t even finish the 2 weeks she asked for, which is the norm in most industries for giving notice. She might have even gone the extra mile and offered to come in for her last few days without being paid, to make up for her early withdrawal.
At the very least, she should have called to say she wasn’t coming in, rather than leaving her coworkers high and dry, wondering if she would return and having to pick up her slack. No matter how miffed she might (justifiably) have been at her employer, she had no right to make her colleagues suffer by adding to her boss’s lack of civility with her own.
One of the many problems with unethical behavior is that it tends to promote more unethical behavior. Why, we ask ourselves, should we go the extra mile when others won’t even go an extra yard? In the end, we all end up losers, and we infect those around us with the bitterness we unnecessarily spread.