Chicago woman fired for working through lunch wins unemployment claim in state court

[mrveggieman]

http://gma.yahoo.com/chicago-woman-f...-abc-news.html

[Star_Cards]

THis is odd. I'm not sure what state laws are here in Indiana about sitting at your desk for lunch or working through lunch while off the clock, but seems a odd that if this just happened once that she would have been terminated. I guess they did say that she was talked to about eating breakfast at her desk, which I could see as an issue is she's a receptionist. However, I find it odd that they'd fire a ten year vet of the company so quickly. Who knows what other office politics were in play here. Seems very odd especially since she was just finishing up some work. I guess if it was bad because the employer could get into trouble I can see the issue.

As far as the unemployment, I can see where the employer had reason to call her termination because of misconduct, but I'm glad that she got it from reading that article. Also glad that she found another job recently.

[duane1969]

I expected this to be about WalMart. They are really anal about taking breaks.

[Star_Cards]

I would hate working for a company that forced you to take breaks or not be at your desk during lunch or even not let you work through lunch. I guess that comes from working for a company for the past 14 years where we aren't really policed in that aspect of our work lives.

[duane1969]

I was a department manager for WalMart and had a conflict with them over breaks. I would often get busy and take my lunch break late or take a short break. One day I noticed on my time card that my lunch breaks were always recorded as exactly 30 minutes and exactly at the 4 hour mark of my work day.

I asked about it and discovered that personnel was altering time sheet data. If I took a 25 minute lunch they would change my clock-in time to reflect a 30 minute lunch. If I took my lunch break 45 minutes late they would change the log-out time to reflect that I had taken my lunch at the correct time. I went to the store manager and was told that it was policy.

[Star_Cards]

that's so weird. seems like a waste of time to have people changing time cards. When I was in high school and college I would at Noble Romans. We got a 15 minute break if we wanted, but never were forced to take it.

[cavaliersfan30]

Duane I am guessing you quit soon after.....

[*censored*]

It varies from place to place.

I worked at a Starbucks in college, and it's their corporate policy that every employee must be given a 10-minute (on the clock) break roughly every 2 hours, and a 25 to 35 minute lunch every 4 hours. If you worked more than 6 hours without clocking out for lunch, a supervisor had to clock you in and out so that they knew you worked extra. Same deal on if you wanted to clock in more than 5 minutes early (or late) or clock out more than 5 minutes late (or early). Fortunately I mostly worked closing shifts, and with the store closing at 8 pm, we could clock out safely anywhere from 8 to 8:40 without having to have the supervisor do it because of the wide range of cleanup time. But if it was after 8:45, have fun supervisor, you're going to have to punch in your code for each of us.