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I'm reading this article on managing a practice and the question comes up of what to do with an employee who has become allergic to something in the new office and continuously has to blow her nose. Granted I don't have my own business and with so many private practices failing, affording employee healthcare might not be possible. So then the question comes up on how the owner can fire her without risk of paying for unemployment. Granted, patients probably aren't going to choose to come to a practice and be worked up by a technician who is living with a constant allergy attack, but look at this from the technicians perspective. She has invested training into this job at her own expense. She probably has an apartment lease on which she would lose a large sum of money on if she has to leave town to find another job. And above all, even though she's sick, she's still trying to work with every last ounce of strength she has. The only thing fair according to this business owner was to be able to fire this woman and not have to pay anything. In at will employment states like Florida, that's the law of the land. I don't agree with that at all. The law once protected an individuals land (their source of income). The law should evolve to help protect an individuals job. So they'll probaby try to use the trick of being as mean as possible in hopes that she'll quit and thus not have to pay unemployment (miserable compensation that it is). I saw a similar situation with a patient today who they basically gave the same deal because he's older and not as fast as he used to be. I've never owned a business but I'd like to believe that I'd either go into debt or even let the business fail before I treated the people who worked for/with me like that. When I work with people, we become family and we should be committed to each other to the bitter end. I hope she takes her employer to the cleaners but lately it seems as though these employers are able to push the costs of a teammembers misfortune onto the rest of the state.

Nobody hates welfare and welfare queens worse than me and I don't believe we should be responsible for people who choose that path. But the example above is not that at all. If she's such a bad teammember that she's worth firing, she should be worth what you pay in unemployment until she can move on and find something else. You can't put all the risk of an employment contract working out onto the employee.

In any arrangement like this (employer/employee, tenant/landlord), there is an inherent tension between the rights of one party against the rights of the other.

There are always good arguments on why someone should or shouldn't be able to do something, but for some questions ultimately you have to decide whose "rights" are going to win.

I've never owned a business but I'd like to believe that I'd either go into debt or even let the business fail before I treated the people who worked for/with me like that.

That would be your choice, of course, but it's a pretty tough spot to be in. And there probably aren't too many banks that are going to want to lend you money to subsidize an inefficient payroll.

As an employer, I've had to try and find a balance between being "nice", and making the necessary decisions for the health of the business. I've also had to learn that no matter how nicely I treated my employees, most of them would leave in a second for a better job; there was no "loyalty" when a better opportunity presented itself. That's fine (I'm not putting them under contract after all), but that flexibility needs to go both ways, so I give my employees great flexibility in their hours and shifts, but they understand that when work slows down, their hours will be cut and some may even be laid off.

Back to the original article, the main point is that the employee isn't going to be happy working there if her allergies are being aggravated. That's the key point. So if I were the employer, I would talk with the employee and see if I could correct the problem with the allergies, and if not, offer support to help her find a job where she can be happy. Let her keep her current job while she looks for another one, and I would try to help her network and provide references as much as possible.

So if I were the employer, I would talk with the employee and see if I could correct the problem with the allergies, and if not, offer support to help her find a job where she can be happy. Let her keep her current job while she looks for another one, and I would try to help her network and provide references as much as possible.

Maybe being willing to help someone move along in that way is the difference. That goes a lot further than simply showing someone the door because they got sick. What irritated me about the article I read was the attitude that the employer should be responsible for doing nothing more than saying, "You're fired, see ya." And that's all most employers do in my experience. And you're right in that being nice at the expense of going out of business doesn't necessarily help anyone.

I've had employers who expect two weeks notice from me and to help them find someone to replace me, train the new person etc. Yet if they decided to fire me, I was never afforded two weeks. Help finding a new job was out of the question. I've even seen companies use the two weeks notice as a chance to fire people and try to take away their vacation time and other things they would have had, if they had simply quit. You're right that employees aren't always committed to employers but I still think many employers idea of fair is skewed.

ajax18 wrote:Nobody hates welfare and welfare queens worse than me and I don't believe we should be responsible for people who choose that path.

If they choose to be old or disabled then it should be upon their bent shoulders.

If they choose to be old or disabled then it should be upon their bent shoulders.

You know that's not what I'm talking about. You can see it by how upset I was with companies that do nothing to help aging workers find a way to move into a lower earning, lower stress job, even if it's just making a few phone calls or providing a good reference. Stepping down to a lower level job is a lot different than imposing yourself upon the state as soon as you start to see a decline in your abilities. While we may not choose it, taking responsibility for our lives will mean attempting to bear burdens upon our own bent shoulders for most of us at some point.

There really shouldn't have to be a law for this kind of thing. We should be helping each other make ourselves as useful as possible.

Welfare queens are women who have children under the expectation that the state will provide for them or perhaps they don't plan at all how they will provide. They have little interest in marriage and forming a two parent household (partly because welfare discourages it). This is very much a lifestyle choice.