Talk about heartless (in Off-topic)

http://www.myfoxphilly.com/dpp/news/local_news/mom-loses-job-after-kidney-donation-0901211

Wow heartless and kidneyless. :(

I hope that someone reading that in Philly hires this woman at a higher salary and more generous vacation leave.

My gut says that will happen.

Absolutely agreed.

Completely heartless. Also, not surprising.

Two Words: Worthless Turds

Karma.........

That just totally sucks... My dad got fired once because he got some back surgery and he had to be out for a while to recover.

God is the defender of the weak and vengeance will be His!

Update: http://www.myfoxphilly.com/dpp/news/local_news/kidney-donor-mom-put-back-on-salary-091311

Yeah not too sure on the hire for another position deal but at least she is getting paid for now, better than nothing that is for sure.

I still say they are worthless turds and are only buckling this much because of the media coverage. Sad that millions should have to say something in order for them to even start to do the right thing.

Karma............

Yep.

To be fair its not like the company was in a good position either. What do you want them to do, tell their customers to come back next month? It didn't say what her position was, but it did say its a small company, which makes it less likely they could have someone cover for her. Both sides were in a bad position here imo.

This is one of those cases that seems so tragic because it's right out in the open for you to see. And it IS terribly sad and unfair.

However,

First off, small companies simply don't always have the luxury of waiting for someone to come back. They simply lack the redundancy necessary to make it feasible. Many smaller companies wouldn't even let her take the time off in the first place. You have to keep in mind that the company still had the same amount of business they had before but one less employee to do it with. Since small businesses would never hire someone for fun, she was filling a necessary role for them. And then she wasn't there for several weeks. They just didn't have a choice. And, what, should they fire the guy they fired and trained while they waited for her and then fired the new person? would THAT be more moral as a company?

Secondly, this kind of thing happens all the time. Constantly. For example, many fast food chains won't let someone take off for more than 9 days in a row, regardless of circumstances. The logic seems to be here that if they can do without you for more than that period of time, than they can do without you all together, or so I've been told. If you insist, you're simply let go. As far as I can tell, the company seems to have gone far beyond what they were required to do by law. Notice, the article doesn't even mention her coming back to find the job filled. She was notified that they had fired someone else, so she still wasn't able to come back to work and, clearly, wasn't going to be able to come back soon.

This simply happens all the time. And while these circumstances are pretty rough, I just don't see the terrible lack of ethics and morality here. THIS is unacceptable, but the MILLIONS of people who are starving or homeless in America right now (A country with more than enough wealth to make sure no one EVER has to be homeless), this is what people want to pick up and show as terrible business ethics? A company not under FMLA (Because they're such a small company) did what they needed to do to stay in business and it's heartbreaking so we crucify them. While several mega corporations in this country do this kind of thing by default, but we let it go?

This may be heartless, but it's nothing business practices haven't done before and nothing I've not grown to just accept. Condemning this company without condemning laws applied to "big business" right now is just a joke.

Not really sure what you mean by that sentence. FMLA is applied to big business so this would not happen at GE or other big bad evil corporations.


I see both the lack of ethics and morality. They should have hired a temp to do her work until she came back. There are plenty of people looking for any work and many likely would have been happy to have a temp job.

There is the legal way and the right way to run a business.

I didn't see the position she filled in the company, so I'm not sure a "temp" could have performed her duty. Temp agencies are typically either hard physical labor when blue collar or very basic secretarial work when white collar. What I'm saying is, there's no way to know if a temp could have reasonably performed her job.


As for being protected by FMLA, you're right. For the most part. But I've long since lost faith in the reliability of government protection against businesses. I'm not saying everyone is screwed out of their rights. But it certainly happens far more often than it should.

Hell, I wasn't offered health insurance for over 6 months while working full time at my job. But what was I to do? Quit? That was my option. My only option.

Companies just don't HAVE to be moral. And a lot of companies work as hard as they possibly can to screw people out of their legal rights. So is anyone really surprised that this company did no screwing, nothing illegal, it simply ran into a situation where they had to replace her?

That I would have to disagree. There are temp agencies for all types of jobs. Accountants, lawyers, doctors, engineers, etc...

If they really needed to, I am sure they could have found someone. But you are correct, they were under no obligation. They were legal in their actions. Morally, horribly wrong.