WomenCo.

A friend of mine was recently fired from her job due to some attendance issues - arriving at work 1 to 2 minutes late.  She  worked in a call center environment and commuted 70 miles daily round trip to her job. Further, she is a single mother who can only drop her daughter off at the school at 6:30am and needs to be at work at 8:00am - with the traffic she may get there 30 minutes early and sometimes late due to traffic, contruction or the weather. She was on this job for 5 years and made many contributions as an employee to this company. She was the go-to person and was at her previous job at 5 years , too.  Now that she is job hunting  she do not know what how to answer, on job application and in interviews why she was terminated out of fear that it will lessen her chances of getting the job.  How should she answer the question of being terminated?

Isn't it illegal to contact your former employer unless you allow them to? In that case she can just say, like the poster above wrote, that it was a mutual termination.

I checked on this recently for my friend and legally, former employers can only confirm that someone has worked for them and the dates. 

If your friend is having difficulty finding a job, please have her chat with me.  I may have something that will work better for her.  My email is:  mrslabel@yahoo.com

It's "legal" for an employer to say WHATEVER they want about you.  A company can get sued for saying something slanderous, but data on poor performance backed by evidence is fair game.  True, good HR guidelines dictate that they will only confirm the dates that you worked there, but smart hiring managers can dig plenty of dirt.  I've interviewed at least 150+ people over the last year and I've found that 7 times out of 10 I can get information about a former employee through a former boss, colleague or subordinate - whether it be salary, reason for leaving, etc.

If you weren't at a job too long and you were fired, just don't put it on your resume.  But if you have to, under no circumstances should you lie or twist the truth.  Honesty is the best policy.

Did she get any warning?  Normally when issues like this happen you first get a verbal (or more depending how nice your manager is) then a write up (or several for documentation showing that they TRIED to tell you both written and verbal) then at termination they bring it up as their 'paper trail'.

Maybe it's a blessing in disguise. 70 mile commute, plus traffic and dropping off kid(s) is a major inconvenience. Hopefully she can find a better job closer to home.

Anonymous says ...

Maybe it's a blessing in disguise. 70 mile commute, plus traffic and dropping off kid(s) is a major inconvenience. Hopefully she can find a better job closer to home.

 

 

I agree whole heartedly.  Why would she put up working with a company that would allow any of its managers to fire people for being two minutes late.  Prediction:  If they keep up that type of policy then word will get around, nobody who is decent will want to work with them, their service will disintegrate by having lousy employees who are always on time but give terrible customer service and their business will eventually fail.  Who has the last laugh now. Another scenario, they will fire the manager and no one will remember why you left so they won't give any information out anyway.  If they call the other hiring managers they will be too scared to tell anyone about your lateness because the having seen what happened to the last guy the environment of the office will have changed. Again, win win win.  You win ultimately because you left before they waited one day before your retirement to fire you.