Friday Frivolity: Goofy Employment Law News Roundup

First, we learn that a 22-year-old Spanish woman was fired from her office job because she insisted on showing up for work early. As Olivia Allhusen reports for MSN.com, the woman routinely arrived at work between 6:45 and 7:00 AM for a shift that started at 7:30. After repeated verbal warnings, the woman continued to show up for work early, racking up nineteen additional infractions. In an additional breach of the duty of loyalty, the employer alleged that the woman had sold a used car battery belonging to the company without permission. Her employer terminated her, and she sued, seeking reinstatement.

It makes for an amusing story. An employee seems to have been punished for having excessive zeal for work, but that may not have been the case. The employer alleged that the woman would sometimes try to clock in before she had even arrived at work. It’s not clear what the woman did when she showed up for work early. What office work is there to do at 6:30 AM? The law is clear that firms can sue employees if, after warnings, they fail to obey workplace rules.

Meanwhile, over in Florida, where normal things happen, Maria Azzurra Volpe reports in Newsweek, that a woman was fired for not showing up on her first day of work. But it is not her fault: while her contract said that she was to start on September 2nd, she received an e-mail instructing her to start on September 22nd. She took to Reddit to complain, and everyone had an opinion.

I don’t think there is much doubt that the employer was within its rights to fire the employee, assuming the employment was at-will. Even if she was hired for term, not showing up for the first day of work might be grounds for termination “for cause.” However, if the employer truly misinformed the employee about her start date, she has a defense and likely should not be fired, and that’s true whether she was hired for term or at-will. A reasonable employer would acknowledge the mistake and invite the employee back to work. By the way, September 2nd was a Tuesday, an unlikely day to start a new job, except that September 1st was Labor Day. September 22nd was a Monday, so it was perfectly reasonable for the employee to think that day was her start date.

I was thinking about this case while watching an episode from Season 2 or “Curb Your Enthusiasm.” Larry (below) gets hired to sell cars, something he has always wanted to try. Everybody but him knows that he will be terrible at it. His wife just closed on a new house, and they are set to move in on Larry’s first day at work. Larry says he can’t help her with the move, explaining that he can’t not show up on his first day of work. But why not? Couldn’t he have made a phone call and asked to start on Tuesday? It’s not as if his new employer expected that Larry David, who has outed himself to the employer as the Larry David who co-created “Seinfeld,” will be a long-term hire. The employer jus thought it would be a lark to have Larry try to sell cars. That show would lose a lot of good plot lines if there were someone available who could reason with Larry.