People like to say to others to be careful what they wish for as it may come true. Maybe we don’t need to take it literally, but the things you say do have meaning and some of them have consequences.
If you announce at your workplace that you are quitting, it doesn’t matter that you don’t mean it, but in some places it can have a legal value and management may take it seriously, especially if they already don’t like you.
This one team lead took the opportunity to get rid of an employee who wasn’t very productive and had anger management issues by maliciously complying with their boss’ order to do as they see fit.
More info: Reddit
Team lead was allowed to make a call about person's employment and they maliciously complied, which turned out to be a good thing
Image credits: Phil Sexton (not the actual photo)
The story takes place a few years ago when the Original Poster (OP) worked for an internet service provider and was a team lead. The way they described their work was “Basically we took the orders that sales made and provisioned circuits to facilitate the customers' needs.”
Only the seniors like OP themselves and another teammate were assigned customers, but others would get them randomly and new ones every day.
The narrator was a team lead in an internet service provider company and had an employee that was a bit dramatic and hot-headed
Image credits: bubblehead_maker
There was one employee that didn’t like this system and was a hot head in general. The OP called him Ginger in this story. Ginger didn’t like that when the customers were assigned for the day, the OP would get skipped because they were handling assignments from his customers that he always did.
This one time, OP got more assignments from their customers than usual, so Ginger kept getting more and more. After a few of them, he got up and just left, apparently having had enough. These orders would take 2 or 3 minutes to finish, so no big deal, but it immensely irritated Ginger to get 2 in a row.
As the OP explained in the comments, “There was no requirement to have orders done in a certain period of time, there was no requirement for him to have today's work done today.”
They didn't like having customer orders sent to them instead of the team lead as they had assigned customers they worked with all the time
Image credits: bubblehead_maker
The manager acknowledged what happened and before going on vacation, asked the OP to tell him if Ginger showed up to work the following day. He actually did, but was in a worse mood than before and threatened to quit if he got any more orders. It didn’t take long for him to announce “That’s it, I quit.”
The team lead thought that this was worth mentioning to their boss despite him being on vacation, but the boss allowed the OP to handle it in their own way. So they interpreted the statement as a request to leave, called HR and terminated the work contract.
He left work early once because he was fed up with the orders and the boss told the team lead to keep an eye on the employee before leaving for vacation
Image credits: bubblehead_maker
That meant disconnecting his badge, removing his access, turning off his email and everything else. Which is important to note as the next day, Ginger came back to work and tried to use his badge, but it didn’t work.
The OP saw his argument with the security guard and interrupted it by acting surprised Ginger came as the day before, he had quit his job. The interaction ended here and the OP doesn’t know what happened to the hot-headed employee, but thinks of him sometimes. Not too much, because the team’s productivity went up, but you can’t help but be curious.
The next day, the employee did the same thing and announced they were quitting, which the team lead took as a resignation
Image credits: bubblehead_maker
The OP mentioned that they are in an at-will state, which means “that an employer can terminate an employee at any time for any reason, except an illegal one, or for no reason without incurring legal liability. Likewise, an employee is free to leave a job at any time for any or no reason with no adverse legal consequences,” as explained by National Conference Of State Legislatures.
The US is one of the few countries in the world where employment is mostly at will. Stephanie Jane Hahn explains that there are a few advantages for this system: “Because employers are able to change the employee’s terms of employment as they wish, the objectives of the company may be met more easily.”
She also adds that employers have more freedom to reward their employees based on their merits and employees “have control over their work situation and can choose to walk away when they wish to do so.”
It seemed that the boss was pretty happy as he didn't want to do it himself despite knowing that it was what was bringing their team performance down
Image credits: bubblehead_maker
Image credits: Kecko (not the actual photo)
Another disadvantage that the lawyer doesn’t mention is that if you don’t mean to quit but say that you do, the employer may interpret it as a serious statement, as it happened in this story. The OP had a feeling that their manager didn’t want to deal with it himself and was actually relieved that it happened during his vacation.
What do you think of this story? Would you say that the team lead went too far? What is your opinion on at-will employment? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.
While most people couldn't understand how the employee was surprised they didn't have a job anymore, some considered the termination evil
