An employee who was kept on the Norfolk, Va. payroll for 12 years without being asked to come in to work has complained that she was wrongfully fired. The employee was originally suspended after misconduct allegations that her agency head for unclear reasons failed to get resolved; his successor dismissed her. [PilotOnline]
6 Comments
I really admire this woman. I wish I had 10% of her ferocious entitlement, pure shamelessness, total dishonesty, and raw chutzpah.
She has all the qualifications of a Chicago style Obama Regime illegal Czar.
Call me bitter and cynical, but I think she has a good chance of winning her case. Given the modern notion that government employees are entitled to their jobs and cannot be removed from them without good cause, and given that her employer willingly paid her to stay home and do nothing for 12 years, I think she has a good chance of successfully arguing that they acted arbitrarily and unfairly by firing her after all this time.
I see poor management everywhere. The new boss is incompetent in how to fire someone. You don’t directly fire them, you get them to quit. It’s very easy. “So Jill, this here is your job description. What are you doing to fulfill it? Oh? Write out a good plan of how you will fulfill your job description. Let’s meet again in one week to see your progress.” “So Jill, let’s see your plan. You didn’t write one? Let me jot that down.”
While I understand the outrage, the fact is that the employee had no ability to contest her firing until she was fired. I’m not sure it’s reasonable to expect an employee to call up and remind her employer that she hasn’t been fired yet. From the news stories it appears that various supervisors deliberately provided false documentation and false information to their supervisors to avoid following through with the required procedures. They were the ones who were responsible for this mess.
“I’m not sure it’s reasonable to expect an employee to call up and remind her employer that she hasn’t been fired yet.”
no, but it is reasonable to assume that said employee maintains regular contact with her managers, which she apparently failed (deliberately) to do.
If she had, they’d either have found work for her to perform or had her terminated earlier, much earlier.
This woman sounds despicable. She had illegally released private records about someone’s HIV status.
However, I have to say that if I were accidentally receiving a paycheck for 12 years and wasn’t showing up or doing the work, and all of a sudden it stopped, I’d probably sue for wrongful termination, too. What has she got to lose? And she’ll probably win. (Make sure that you follow up when there’s a resolution to her case!)