Blink And You May Get Fired
This post is an excerpt from the essay ‘Blink And You May Get Fired’.
I just lost my fourth job in ten years.
The first ax fell at a national department store whose CEO decided to “trim fat” as he continued ringing up $300,000 in quarterly bonuses. I lost the next job at an ad agency, where the principals overcharged clients while freezing employee raises; and the next at a well-known corporation, where the new president decided to deep-six the marketing department in favor of outsourcing. The latest demise shares a core commonality with the others: termination without cause. In other words, I was fired simply because it was my employer’s will to fire me. Sue, you say? Gladly I would, were it not for a federal law that makes any chance of winning in court impossible. It’s the At-Will Employment law; and it gives employers in all fifty states carte blanche to dismiss employees at any time, for any reason (except discrimination and a few other easy-to-prove wrongful motivations) — indeed, for no reason at all. (So much for the American Dream.)
How can such a clearly biased statute be legal?