Worker Fired For Not Working 60 Hours Per Week & ‘Underperforming’ Despite Making 102% Of Her Goal
"We're not horrible people," said HR as they fired her.
KeyStock / Shutterstock In many ways, work defines our lives, even though we’re told it shouldn’t. We spend most of our time at our jobs. For many employees, especially those in the corporate world, work-life balance is more a myth than a reality.
Devoting our waking hours to work is fine until, of course, it isn’t.
A worker got fired for not working 60 hours a week and ‘underperforming’ even though she made 102% of her goal.
The unnamed woman recorded an HR call in which she got fired “for no reason.”
She filmed herself sitting on the edge of a bed, speaking on the phone with a man and another woman who explained the reasons she was losing her job.
“We have been reviewing the performance of our team members, and we have chosen a pool of people that we actually feel are underperforming,” the female HR representative said. “Historically, looking at your targets and how you’ve been performing, you’re actually 77% below.”
The employee stood up for herself by responding, “Yeah, but historically, as you’re talking, I was hitting way, way, way above target. I’m still on 102%. That’s not underperforming; I’m still making the company [expletive] a lot of money.”
The male HR representative cut in, saying, “We’re concerned about the downward trend. You were, of course, overperforming in the early days, but as that seems to be going less and less at the moment, we feel very concerned that might continue to the point where you’re actually severely underperforming and costing the business money.”
The employee clapped back, saying, “I’m sorry, this doesn’t seem legitimate in the slightest.”
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It goes to show how much power upper management has over their employees when a person can get fired even though they’re working beyond 100%.
HR tried to justify their decision to fire her by citing performance data, noting, “When you look at the actual spreadsheets, we can see that back in November, you hit 197%. And 102 that you’re on currently is really severely damaging for the company.”
“We’re losing a lot of money because you’re not working as hard,” the HR representative said, despite the worker performing at 102%.
HR continued listing off reasons why they were firing the woman, saying, “You don’t want to stay overtime and help your other team members. You’re saying like, ‘Yeah, it’s 7 p.m., I need to clock out.’ This isn’t proper teamwork.”
The woman defended her work once again, explaining that she works after she puts her kids to sleep.
“I work a lot of overtime,” she insisted. “I work in the evenings, when my children have gone to bed, I actually sit down and do work as well. You can’t say that I’m clocking out early, I’m actually working more hours than I should.”
fizkes / Shutterstock
HR maintained that they had to think about "What was best for the company" by firing her.
“We have other people who are actually pulling the 60 hours, making sure the projects are way ahead of deadlines,” the HR representative said. “You are the only person who actually sends the report within 5 minutes of the deadline. There’s no time for us to review and make sure if there’s any additional changes.”
'To me, it feels like you’re slacking,' HR said, despite noting that the woman pulls in 102% of her target.
Even when a company exclaims that “they’re a family” or that it prioritizes people first, it all clearly comes down to profits. When workers stop bringing in that cold, hard cash, they’re shown the door, as this woman was.
When the worker asked why her manager wasn’t on the call, HR responded that her manager was on annual leave, and they decided to “go ahead and have the meeting because every additional day we keep you on costs us money.”
“You’re not even giving me any notice,” the woman said, to which HR replied, “We’re giving you a notice right now.”
“The company does reserve the right to give a shorter notice period, due to underperformance and lack of standards,” the male HR representative cut in.
“Out of the goodness of my heart, I think we can pay her for an extra week,” the female HR representative said. “We’re not horrible people, are we?”
The recording cut off before the worker could answer, but it’s safe to say she affirmed that they were, in fact, terrible people.
Unfortunately, the woman found herself in a situation where there was no good solution. She went above and beyond in her work and was still told she wasn’t doing enough. What she went through could best be described as a modern-day Catch-22.
Even though she was hitting above her target, she still got fired, so at least she can sit with the knowledge that she did the best she could in an unfair environment.
Alexandra Blogier is a writer on YourTango's news and entertainment team. She covers social issues, pop culture analysis and all things to do with the entertainment industry.