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This can’t real
It can real.
Woah.
If it is, I think it’s illegal in the US at least. By law I think employers are required to give at least one 30 minute break a day.
Employees have rights in the US?
Some of us do, and our employers hate it and try to keep us from knowing/using those rights
That’s what unions are for ultimately. Educate you about your rights and help enforce them. But uuhhh no that’s dirty communism so forget about them.
Only in some states. There is no federal law mandating breaks or meals.
This is why I don’t goto Buc-ees when traveling. They only operate in states with little to no worker protection and they do not allow their employees to have any breaks. Yes they pay a few dollars more per hour but absolute abuse their employees. So as nice as their mega gas stations are , they will never get another dollar from me.
It’s like a Walmart, Cracker Barrel, and a Sheetz had some unholy abomination of a child. I went exactly once to see what gives everyone such a hard-on, and couldn’t get out fast enough.
The buc-ee’s simping is so weird to me. It’s just a gas station with a gift shop. Like, I get it, it’s got nice bathrooms, nobody is disagreeing, but so many road trips with big groups somebody wants to go there and spend like 30 minutes shopping. I hate it.
There isn’t a state where there is no mandatory unpaid meal break.
Yes, all states mandate meal breaks except Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Louisiana, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming (source)
I live in Arizona, I can assure you it is mandatory.
Can you give me a link the law mandating meal breaks? The only bit of Arizona legislature I can find regarding meal breaks is HB 2797, which did not pass into actual law.
“Illegal” who enforces that lol. You complain to get fired unless you have a legal team ready to go against a corrupt corporation. I’ve watched companies break all kinds of laws my entire life and it’s about to get a whole lot worse.
There are labor lawyers that take cases like this on contingency. A case like this is a slam dunk for them. You don’t have to just sit there and take it.
Hi Brenda,
While you were watching me and writing me memos, you could have been making sales.
Don’t ever put pettiness over money, keep yourself focused on your work instead of your coworkers.
Warmest Regards,
Harambe
Hi Brenda,
I wanted to reach out regarding a small observation I made in your last email. In telling me how to spend 30 minute meal break and encouraging me to cut it short for the company’s benefit, you violated US labor law.
Let’s correct this behavior and try to be more mindful of that “our company is not above the law” spirit so we can keep your momentum going in the right direction. :-)
Eric
P. S. I will be retaining this communication in case this remains an issue. Thanks :-)
See, the people that do this shit are well trained though. Brenda didn’t demand that he work during lunch and was in fact clear that he was within his rights to not. Instead, Brenda has simply suggested that it would look better and he would conform better if he worked some unpaid time.
They know how to skirt the law. They can still go fuck themselves though, the gaslighting assholes.
Ianal but “voluntarily” taking a shorter lunch break is still illegal in some states. In my state, my boss would get in trouble if it could be proven that they knew I wasn’t taking the full, mandatory 30 minutes.
That can be annoying too, I’d rather get home to my family 15 minutes sooner. But of course Brenda isn’t offering a short lunch and leave earlier.
Lucky you.
And that’s why you retain the email. Establishing a pattern makes the specific language less important, although in this case there’s a pretty clear implication that the employee will be punished for using their full meal break.
Good luck litigating an implication though. See the “nuh uh” defense success rate.
I’m not saying it’s airtight. But the pattern of ‘recommendations’ certainly helps. It convinced a judge in my friend’s wrongful termination case at a big box retailer.
She did also say “correct this behaviour” which is the corpo way of saying “do it or else”
Even here in Texas, I’ve learned that “let’s correct this behavior” can be shown as evidence that you received threats of a personal improvement plan
Corpo language is corpo language for a reason though: it is legally safe to deploy. Intent is so very very hard to litigate.
No that’s not a “safe” way to say this. It’s a pretty god damn clear demand
Doesn’t “correct this behavior” very directly imply that the current behavior (in this case, taking your full lunch break) is incorrect and therefore in need of correction, though?
It’s one thing to suggest something, but calling it a “correction” changes things, I’d think.
You’d think. Really, you would, I’m not being sarcastic.
I’ve also been around long enough to know that rational doesn’t really apply to corpos. As dumb and as frustrating as this is, I really don’t think this message would be actionable.
Someday an employee is going to sue you and you will lose.
I’m guessing you didn’t actually read my comment at the start here.
If you were in a jury box and were shown just this message and a note about how he was fired two months later for “not being a team player” you’d infer the intent and vote to hold the company liable for wrongful termination.
Corpospeak keeps a “work through lunch” message from being a self-evident labor law violation even if no adverse action occurrrd. They don’t disguise intent if those later bad actions occur
Workplace litigation effectively never gets a jury.
Particularly in countries that allow employers to force arbitration clauses on employees. You don’t get a jury, you get an “impartial” arbitrator paid for by the company.
Yep. Frustrating.
Because the company knows it can settle to avoid the Discovery process.
Mastercardery & Visary processes too
US Labor Law
HahahahahahHahahahahahahahah*wheeze*HAHHAHAHAHA
There are no US laws requiring work breaks.
Less than 10 statesedit: around 20 have laws that require one.In the vast majority of states you could be asked to work a 16 hour shift with zero breaks entirely legally. Most employers do have break policies but it is not law.
The US Department of Labor site lists 20 states and 2 territories.
All 50 states though require you are compensated for your work. So if this is a non-salary position still illegal if the break period is unpaid.
Additionally if his work contract garuntees the break period that still has legal standing
All 50 states though require you are compensated for your work. So if this is a non-salary position still illegal if the break period is unpaid.
True, however it isn’t said in the photo that they should not clock back in.
work contract
Employment contracts are extremely rare or non-existent in the US.
Employment contracts are extremely rare or non-existent in the US.
Not at all, very common for salary positions
I work salary and in my industry I’ve never heard of it. I’m sure they exist but I cannot imagine why any company would do it.
Maybe at executive levels?
I’m salaried and part of a union. I have a contract.
Perhaps you are thinking of contract in too grand a scale, any basic employment agreement stating your hours and company rules is a contract.
Yeah but those are basically useless as they all contain the boilerplate that basically says that they can be changed at any time for any reason without notice. They don’t bind the employer in any way.
Lol this but CC your state labor board
Imo the move is to respond with a clarifying question about whether the hr person is asking them to cut breaks short while reiterating that asking them to do so is a violation of labor law and document the hell out of it.
If it happens again, then make a complaint with labor. This shows that you are operating in good faith and giving the company a chance to correct before going nuclear, which further strengthens your case if you do have to report.
Sometimes the hr person is just an idiot. I’ve seen suggestions like this before and it turned out the hr person literally didn’t know you can’t just arbitrarily deduct wages without explicit permission from the payee (and in some states, not even then).
“support your work family”
RUN AWAY!
Can’t be real… this is ragebait, right?
Cool, so since I only took 20 minutes for lunch, I’ll be heading home 40 minutes earlier.
“It really doesn’t look good for you to take your break during your break time, so please avoid taking breaks during your break.”
– Someone that clearly hasn’t worked in a while
If people didn’t redact the names, and instead shame those idiots and companies, maybe they would think twice next time
I suppose this shit is from u$ or another such savage country. In Europe the company would pay a huge penalty for putting pressure to limit the break time.
That’s illegal in the US too.
The OP has a pretty solid case, the manager laid it out in writing. This should immediately get forwarded to HR, upper management. Depending on their response, everything goes to the Department of Labour.
The hard part is proving retaliation, (also illegal). Calling out these types of “team player” people leads to indirect stuff like poor performance reviews, smaller raises, denied PTO, and getting passed up for promotion because you didn’t play on their team.
Labor lawyers love these cases since you have the illegal act in writing. At that point, even with the made up performance reviews it’s super easy to prove a subsequent firing was retaliatory.
If they’re smart enough to only break the law face to face, be sure to send an email summary to them and HR and bcc a copy for yourself. If that’s not possible, then keep detailed notes with timestamps.
In the UK, workers are legally entitled to at least a 20 minute break for every six hours they work, and generally contracts and an employee handbook can offer more. If this was a British firm, Brenda would be feeling the wrath of HR if they caught wind of this.
Print it and hang it in the break room. No comment necessary. See if your coworkers join you next break.
This email reminds me of the literal month that I lasted at the Costco world headquarters… Never again
I would absolutely love to hear more about this. Im a huge Costco simp so this is concerning
I’m pretty sure a lot of it was the specific manager I worked for. I was getting in trouble for the most ridiculous things… they got mad at me for writing hey in emails instead of hello or hi, got mad at me when my teammates didn’t do something correctly, got in trouble for working 7 minutes overtime by accident (then got in trouble for taking lunch between back-to-back meetings), spoke poorly about my teammates when they weren’t around and would not communicate expectations until after I did something wrong. Additionally, I was told I’m too anxious when providing feedback on the things I was hired to provide feedback on, and there was no work/life balance. Maybe I’ve been blessed to have better jobs before this, but I didn’t know a workplace could be so toxic
Spill the tea!
Costco has a huge reputation of being really worker friendly. There are fb groups of people providing tips and tricks on how to improve their chances at working at Costco, like they were trying to get into Harvard.
So this is fascinating
The proper response isn’t to quit, It to send a response that says that the law requires a break, and you intend to follow the law, even if my supervisor demands that I break the law. I will not follow an illegal directive.
I’m the future, I will take all legal breaks, for their full amount of time.
Further, I will be saving this email as evidence, in case of any future lawsuits by any employees. Any future discussion of this subject will be shared with the state department of labor.
And I would copy HR.
They’d just find a bullshit reason to let you go, then break more laws sharing disallowed details about your employment.
Sadly, in the US at least, the regulatory capture is complete. Any company acting like this (blatantly breaking labor laws and ignoring worker rights) knows they’ll pay less than the cost of keeping the water cooler full in the off chance the labor board sends them more than a mildly worded letter.
Edit: I was feeling pretty pessimistic when I wrote this, I didn’t intend it you come across as “don’t try” but I can certainly see how it comes across that way. We should all be holding the companies and the regulatory agencies accountable, and not letting them get away with breaking laws. Enough people making enough noise can’t be swept under the rug.
No, you can still win lawsuits against companies that do that. They rely on the reluctance of people to sue and on people like you who try to talk people out of defending their rights to get away with it.
I’m not so sure. With that letter, and your response, its going to be hard for them to claim that your firing wasn’t retaliatory.
If it is a private company with a ‘work family’ mentality they’ll ignore it entirely on the gamble those kinds of entities never hire, or pay, anyone enough to afford a wrongful termination lawsuit.
And if so, they’ll be willing to lie under oath. They’re already willing to break the law. They’ll have the remaining employees, in the rare odds they’re deposed, do the same. If they’re already working through lunch, they’ll sign a document for their boss that says you stole something.
Except you’ve got an email where the boss specifically advises you to break the law. They can lie all they want, but that email clearly outlines their illegal policy and expectations.
They can lie, but a judge might declare that to be perjury in light of that email.
Their goal would be to muddy the waters so that their decision is reframed as something other than wrongful termination.
The e-mail, when paired with evidence that smears the terminated party, (forged or not) creates a dynamic where severance appears necessary.
The company can claim they fired the person because they didn’t want to pursue criminal charges for theft or smear their name and hope they find Christ or something. And that works with judges. Even in the face of overwhelming evidence of wrongdoing and misconduct: they’ll just be analyzing if the termination was wrongful.
This is one of the many reasons why unions are important, by the way.
This is one of the many reasons why unions are important, by the way.
Oh, yeah, unionize EVERYTHING. The ONLY reason we have all the employee protections and benefits we have are because of unions. Literally every single thing an employee gets beyond “work harder, or you’re fired from your dangerous low-paying job” is because of unions.
This is true. Company could easily wait a while then hit OP with a vaguely worded pip. Bam, magically they get let go for “performance” issues that seemingly have nothing to do with how they take their lunches.
Yeah, skip the email. Go directly to telling the department of labor.
“My apologies, this wasnt brought forward in the interview stage. If it continues to be a problem I will.be reachable on this email address.”
If that had happened in Germany, Brenda would have provably committed an administrative offence and should stop unless they want to go to jail:
§ 4 Rest breaks
Work shall be interrupted by predetermined rest breaks of at least 30 minutes for working hours of more than six to nine hours and 45 minutes for working hours of more than nine hours in total. The rest breaks referred to in sentence 1 may be divided into periods of at least 15 minutes each. Employees may not be employed for more than six consecutive hours without a rest break.
§ 22 Penalty provisions
(1) An employer commits an administrative offence if they intentionally or negligently
- contrary to § 4, do not grant rest breaks, do not grant them for the prescribed minimum duration or do not grant them in a timely manner
(2) In the cases referred to in paragraph 1, nos. 1 to 7, 9 and 10, the administrative offence may be punished with a fine of up to thirty thousand euros […].
§ 23 Penal provisions
(1) Any person who commits one of the acts specified in Section 22(1) Nos. 1 to 3, 5 to 7
- intentionally and thereby endangers the health or working capacity of an employee, or
- persistently repeats, shall be punished with imprisonment for up to one year or a fine.
Can you please adopt me and my small family? We need a path out of this hell hole.
Also she didn’t laminate her email so it’s not valid anyway
The Brenda person seems like someone that’d get featured in LinkedinLunatics.
