Should I make them fire me?

June 11, 2013 3:06 PM

Does it make sense to try to be fired from a 1.5 month job in order to collect unemployment? (New York State)

I started a new position a month and a half ago. Over the course of the last few weeks, it became apparent that my expertise was not in the area that the job covered at all. The job was described as a creative/artistic position, when in fact it was a managerial/clerical/scheduling position. This is not my skill set whatsoever, and I've been extremely bad at it.

Last week, my boss encouraged me to quit, but was incredibly oblique and, I felt, sort of manipulative about it ("Let's have an honest discussion about your happiness here" became "You will never be happy here and maybe we should just have you as a contract employee for little tasks. How do you feel about this?" but never "You are fired."). I couldn't tell if he wasn't firing me in order to be nice, or as a way of withholding unemployment benefits.

My question: Should I force them to fire me? Or should I just quit? Would I even be eligible for unemployment after 1.5 months? I am incredibly unhappy here and had been planning to leave, just not so soon. I feel shitty making them fire me, but I also feel like the organization screwed me by doing a bad job vetting me, doing a terrible job describing the position to me, and put me in a bad position (I left a good job for this job).

Pertinent facts: This is in New York. The position also "demands" 55 hour work weeks and a couple hours weekend work (and all overtime is unpaid). I've earned about $6000 at this position. Before this I had another position for about a month that I left for this position. Before that I was freelancing/unemployed, but not collecting unemployment. I've never collected unemployment & don't really know anything about it.

posted by anonymous to Work & Money (21 answers total)

Is there any reason why you can’t just keep at it, business as usual until you find a new job? That’s what I’d do. Your boss might be encouraging you to quit so that you don’t collect unemployment.
posted by oceanjesse at 3:10 PM on June 11, 2013 [9 favorites]

somebody's trying to force you out. Stick with it and find a new job ASAP, cause you won't get fired.
posted by boo_radley at 3:14 PM on June 11, 2013 [3 favorites]

1) Continue at current job, do not volunteer to quit or become a temp. 2) Apply for other, better jobs, 3) Leave when you have accepted another offer.
posted by zippy at 3:25 PM on June 11, 2013 [11 favorites]

Your end goal is neither this job nor unemployment (with or without unemployment benefits). Your end goal is a new job. Work towards your end goal. Your end goal will be more difficult if you are unemployed - both because you won't have much/any money (making you more likely to take any job available rather than a better job) and because employers tend to be cautious about hiring unemployed workers. So, avoid unemployment in any form and spend your time trying to get a new job. There's absolutely no reason for you to voluntarily leave your position or cause them to fire you, regardless of unemployment benefits you may/may not receive. For however bad you think your job is, you will likely find unemployment worse.
posted by saeculorum at 3:28 PM on June 11, 2013 [6 favorites]

Don't feel shitty about making them do anything. They misrepresented the position and did a poor job hiring. Start looking for a new job ASAP and stick this one out as long as possible.
posted by radioamy at 3:36 PM on June 11, 2013

I agree with all this advice: make finding a new job a priority, on your current employer's payroll if you can. Of course, there is a chance that they will find out what you are doing and fire you, but then you can get unemployment. The bottom line is that you don't have much to lose by sticking it out, and it is easier to find a new job while you are in one.
posted by rpfields at 3:44 PM on June 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Start looking for a new job while you hold onto the old job. I don't know how unemployment in NY works, but in other states, your unemployment benefit is determined by looking at several quarters of qualifying income. You may not have even one quarter's worth of qualifying income and may not be eligible for unemployment benefits.
posted by quince at 3:47 PM on June 11, 2013

Does New York pay unemployment if you're fired for cause? Most states don't. You have no guarantee that if you "forced" them to fire you, they wouldn't fire you for the cause of whatever you did to force them.
posted by Lyn Never at 3:49 PM on June 11, 2013 [9 favorites]

Always make them fire you. Always, always, always. Why? Two reasons:

1 -- Unemployment offices have weird, arcane rules on what constitutes "fired for cause." They do not have weird, arcane rules on what constitutes "quit."

2 -- They might not fire you. Firing people sucks. Even firing people who are assholes and bad at their jobs and shoot up in their cubicles. Firing people who are honestly trying, no matter how bad they are, and aren't dickheads? That is difficult for the vast majority of human beings, and they will put it off as long as they can. There's a reason companies bring in outsiders to do layoffs, because then their managers can sleep at night knowing that they weren't the ones who pulled the trigger. So while they're gathering up the courage to fire you (and leaving unsubtle clues about how you really should just quit and save them the trouble), you keep drawing a paycheck and you work your network and hit the job boards and find a better job, and only then do you quit.

So keep trying to do the crappy job they suckered you into, try harder to find a new one (not on company time -- don't even send emails on your own phone unless you're outside their building on an approved break), and make them do their job.
posted by Etrigan at 4:02 PM on June 11, 2013 [8 favorites]

Does New York pay unemployment if you're fired for cause? Most states don't.

Determining whether you're eligible for unemployment isn't a trivial problem, and you should probably talk to someone who is familiar how it works in your state. For instance, being fired "for cause" isn't a standard which is used to determine eligibility in New York--you would need to be fired for actual misconduct, or for committing a felony, to be disqualified. In fact, being fired because you don't meet the qualifications for your job is specifically noted as a case "likely" to be eligible for benefits.

However, your eligibility is also determined by the amount of money you earned (and when you earned it) over several quarters before you lose your job. Unless you're very confident that you will be able to collect unemployment, it would be a good idea to hang on in this position as long as possible while you look for work. Plus. it's easier to find a job while you have one, in any case.
posted by pullayup at 4:05 PM on June 11, 2013 [2 favorites]

If they take you from being salaried/employed full time to becoming an occasional contractor, that might constitute laying you off from the perspective of unemployment benefits.

Also, depending on what you're actually doing (how skilled it is, whether you're supervising others, etc), the unpaid overtime might not be legal. Just because you are salaried doesn't mean you're exempt from overtime pay, though a lot of people confuse the two.
posted by needs more cowbell at 4:05 PM on June 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

employers tend to be cautious about hiring unemployed workers.

1000x this. It's hard to even get an interview without already having a job now, no matter what you're doing. Gaps in employment history are becoming like gaps in health insurance or something.

I know it sucks to have to deal with sending out apps, talking to people, having email exchanges, and going to interviews if you're working that much... but just do it from home and then call in sick when you have an interview scheduled. This is really a rock and a hard place thing here, but i would never be willingly unemployed or try and create some constructive situation to cause that ever again, especially if i already had a job vaguely in my field.

So yea, pretty much what zippy said. Tough it out and just build your ladder over the wall as quickly as possible. Because being unemployed for any reason is like being a convicted felon now or something. Once i suddenly became unemployed(and i was looking forward to it at the time) i couldn't find a job even being a "sandwich artist" or something for a year and a half. This was at the peak of the recession, but still. Things have changed.
posted by emptythought at 4:07 PM on June 11, 2013

1. Yes, nthing what everyone else has said. Start looking.
2. Yes, they're trying to get you to quit so they don't have to fire you.
3. In my (anecdotal and limited) experience, it's very difficult for an organization to prove cause for firing such that unemployment gets denied, even when (in my anecdotal and limited experience) the firing was beyond justified. YMMV. Of course, if you were in some kind of probationary period (likely), they may be able to fire you without your receiving benefits. I don't know.
4. I'm not sure, but I thought the period of getting unemployment benefits is somehow related to term of employment, so even if you get it, it may not be for long. But I really don't know.

So yes, start looking. Yes, if it comes down to getting fired vs. quitting, I'd get fired. (I learned this one the hard way and no matter what, I will make them fire me the next time.) They misrepresented the job. You either leave it off your resume altogether or you tell prospective employers that it was not as it had been represented.

Just out of curiosity, if you liked the good job you left for this one, and were only there for one month, why did you leave? Whatever the reason, it would be a good thing to think about in relation to the next move.
posted by loveyallaround at 4:14 PM on June 11, 2013

The position also "demands" 55 hour work weeks and a couple hours weekend work (and all overtime is unpaid).

I am not a lawyer, but my gut feeling is that you should absolutely be documenting this expectation and begin to not meet it as soon as possible. Consult a lawyer about that, because I can't promise you that it's in your best interest.

But unpaid overtime is an incredibly douchey thing to do to an employee. And happens to be punishable by law.

Get a lawyer.
posted by bilabial at 4:18 PM on June 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Oh and also: I have three friends who were fired in the last year for different reasons (in different states, none of them New York). All three thought that due to their circumstances they wouldn't qualify for unemployment. All three did.
posted by loveyallaround at 4:19 PM on June 11, 2013

But unpaid overtime is an incredibly douchey thing to do to an employee. And happens to be punishable by law.

There are some positions ("exempt" positions) where an employer is not required to pay overtime. I have no idea if the OP's position is exempt or not.

OP, check out the NY overtime rules here if you want to look into this.

Here is the NY information on eligibility for unemployment benefits.
posted by insectosaurus at 4:27 PM on June 11, 2013 [2 favorites]

For instance, being fired "for cause" isn't a standard which is used to determine eligibility in New York

Just to clarify, "for cause" is a legal term in employment law with a meaning more limited than the lay meaning of "we had a reason to fire you." Cause is something unbelievable awful, like embezzlement or never showing up or punching a co-worker awful. It does not include "sucks at or is a poor match for the job."

So when people say "for cause" it's sometimes.counterintuitive that cause is a much stricter standard than the employer had reasons, even good ones, to fire you. And the burden of demonstrating cause in my state (CA) is on the employer.
posted by zippy at 4:43 PM on June 11, 2013 [1 favorite]

Ignore my previous comment. NY appears to have a standard that looks like it is practically similar to California's "for cause" wording, but uses different language.
posted by zippy at 4:49 PM on June 11, 2013

In my (anecdotal and limited) experience, it's very difficult for an organization to prove cause for firing such that unemployment gets denied, even when (in my anecdotal and limited experience) the firing was beyond justified. YMMV.

Same experience here. I was once on the employer end of someone getting fired for a good reason- that person still got unemployment because there was no way we could have fought it. The shark who called me to get initial details on the case was still one of the toughest people I've ever spoken to.
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 5:50 PM on June 11, 2013

In my (anecdotal and limited) experience, it's very difficult for an organization to prove cause for firing such that unemployment gets denied, even when (in my anecdotal and limited experience) the firing was beyond justified. YMMV.

Yep! And if you quit for any reason, you will not be able to collect unemployment. A friend of mine left a job because her boss kept threatening to fire her (among other things), and she was denied, despite appealing that she was, essentially, already fired and working in a hostile work environment.

So, keep job searching! Make them fire you. Or rather, wait to make them fire you because playing passive aggressive games to convince them to fire you will probably backfire.
posted by ablazingsaddle at 6:00 PM on June 11, 2013

If you're planning on looking for a new job in the same industry, and current employer knows other people in the industry, then "trying to get fired" could backfire badly.
posted by inigo2 at 5:16 AM on June 12, 2013