"It's just not good business."

[Kalani]

This went down a couple weeks ago, but I'm STILL trying to wrap my head around it.

My sister got fired from her job a couple weeks ago. She worked at the same place I still work. We have an 'occurance' policy, where if you have 10 occurances in a rolling 12 month period, you will be pretty much shown the door. (Being late is half an occurance, being sick is a full occurance, though you can miss 3 straight days with calling in and only get the 1 occurance.)

Anyways, my sister had been at 9 at the start of the month, and the day before she had to go to work, she had an issue with her eye. The only place that would've been open was an emergency room, but it wasn't quite an 'emergency', just an urgent care type of situation.

So that night, we went over her occurance schedule, showing the occurances still on the list. About a week after the month started, an occurance was set to fall off her record. So she figured she could go to urgent care, see what was wrong with the eye, I'd provide a doctor's note since I had a shift later that day (as little good as that would do with the occurance policy), and then she could go in the next day as long as it wasn't too big of a problem.

I take her up in the morning, and she gets checked out. She basically needs medicated eyedrops to take care of what's essentially a zit under the eyelid (ew), and she gets the note, which I take in. The supervisor takes the note and no big deal, right?

Next morning as I get up, my sister's home, talking to our mom. Little brother approaches me and says 'don't talk to her about work'. I ask why... and find out they really fucking fired her!

She got told that she has ELEVEN occurances not long after she gets there and is shown the door! Needless to say, none of this makes sense to me. Even if the occurance hadn't fallen off, there's no way she had that many occurances.

So of course, within hours, they lock up all her login information, and basically try to sweep her service under the rug, with an e-mail only to our department that '(she) is no longer with (company) and if you have any questions, see a supervisor.'

She's fighting to get unemployment and looking for a new job, not that they seem to give a fuck that she's got bills to pay. Agh...

As for the subject title, ANOTHER rep in my department got fired that same day for hitting 10 occurances too. He posted about it on facebook. He'd gone through some surgeries, had a parent pass away, and other crap this year, and was told that was the reason why he got let go, it wasn't good business to be gone that much.

[Marmalady]

So if you need surgery, what are you supposed to do?

When I first joined the store where I work, employees used to get a yearly bonus (no longer, due to 'economic reasons') Anyway, this bonus used to get reduced accordng to how many sick days a worker had in that year - 1 - 2 days would reduce it by a certain percentage, 3 - 4 days by a bit more, you get the drift.

So, the AM suddenly has his appendix decide to erupt. And when I say erupt, I mean it - apparently it went with such force it moved various other vital bits by an inch or more, and as might be imagined he was very ill for a while, and it was some weeks before he was back at work.

Of course this meant he got NO bonus at all. Like he had any choice in going sick! The fact that he's an awesome manager, works his socks off and is the guy we all go to if we have any problems, that didn't matter.

[Blade_Raver]

It's BS like this is the reason why I hate the "occurrence" system that HR uses in companies.

All it does is raise departmental turnover rates.

I worked at Convergys back in 2001 and people were getting tossed out right and left. I was there a year and I saw at least 200 employees come and go in my department alone. No joke.

[Gerrinson]

10 occurences is pretty generous.

At Ye Olde Call Centre where I worked, they would write you up at 3 occurences and fir you at 5. And they took a full year to drop off.

Oh, did I mention that you can't clock in until 2 minutes before your shift or more than 1 minute after without generating an occurence?

So, we had 150 people per shift that needed to clock in on the one and only time clock in the same 4 minute span. That's less than 2 seconds per person to swipe their card and punch in a 4 digit PIN. That's a good plan right there. Clearly someone in corporate totally thought that one all the way through.

[Bright_Star]

A lot of employers don't understand or don't want to understand or just don't give a fuck that life happens. There's more to life than just going to a job.

[rose_metal_nz]

Wow. That's horrible AND it smells awfully fishy (tho I know our HR department acts just as swiftly for any staff that get fired/quit on the spot so it might be policy maybe ) My condolences to your sister

[AccountingDrone]

Major sucks, I hope she gets both unemployment and a new job.

[and I have worked at a place where the occurances do not roll off ... and you only got 3 strikes.]

[SuperDan]

I hate to sound like an asshole, but it really is not good business to have employees not be relied upon to be at their workstations and working on time. Businesses schedule their employees (theoretically anyway) to have enough help there to keep up with demand for their product/service, but not so many as to have employees just sitting around waiting for more work. If one employee is missing every now and then, shit happens, other employees pick up the slack, life goes on. If an employee is absent or significantly late frequently, even just once every six weeks, that slack that needs to be covered for adds up. It may lead to either the need to pay another employee overtime to cover for the absence or it may lead to a situation in which the product/service cannot be delivered due to the absence.

That being said, I do hope that in the cases of the employees being terminated due to attendance violations the employers have adhered to their published and agreed to attendance policies, and have shown the employees being terminated the records of their attendance violations and how they earn a termination under those policies.

[Blade_Raver]

Back at the Con, it was possible to get 8 occurrences in 1 day.

Keep in mind, that this is a call center where you are handed calls without warning (beep! they're on your headset.) and you're assigned a specific break/lunch time that you must adhere to.

Late to work - 1 occurrence.
Late to 1st break - 1 occurrence.
Late coming back from 1st break - 1 occurrence.
Late to lunch - 1 occurrence.
Late coming back from lunch. - 1 occurrence.
Late to 2nd break - 1 occurrence.
Late coming back from 2nd break - 1 occurrence.
Late leaving work - 1 occurrence.

So.. 10 occurrences in 2 days is totally possible... most of them are completely beyond your control, especially if they're constantly in queue (which they were.)

Convergys goes through employees faster than a person with diarrhea goes through toilet paper.

How they stay in business is completely beyond my comprehension.

[Kristev]

Virus and bacteria aren't interested in corporate's bottom line.

[EricKei]

Late to 1st break - 1 occurrence.

So...if you're halfway through a call at the moment your break is supposed to begin, you get an Occurence for that? o_O

[telecom_goddess]

Wow and we have someone working here who is ALWAYS calling in late/sick...like every week! And she only works half days to begin with. She might as well not even be here. Yet she still has a job....