Employee Is Ready To Return To Work After Injury, Is Informed That They Already Have A Replacement

When a sports star is injured and then traded to another team, fans often accuse the franchise of being disloyal to the player who gave the team strength and talent at the risk of health. Yes, such criticism is almost always fair, but let’s look more broadly – cases like this occur in our lives all the time.

Managers fire employees literally out of the blue, and unlike football or basketball players, employees here do not have a multimillion-dollar contract behind them. Only unemployment benefits, nothing else. The sad story of the user u/ShowerForsaken2190 is another confirmation of this.

The author of the post once injured their shoulder and had to miss four weeks for healing

Image credits: Ryutaro Tsukata (not the actual photo) 

The manager, however, supported the worker verbally and wished them a speedy recovery

Image credits: u/ShowerForsaken2190

Image credits: Annie Spratt (not the actual photo) 

Image credits: u/ShowerForsaken2190

The employee told the boss about their healing progress every week and each time the manager wished them nothing but good

Image credits: Mikhail Nilov (not the actual photo) 

Image credits: u/ShowerForsaken2190

Imagine the author’s frustration and anger when only a week before returning to work, the boss told them the company had already replaced them

In fact, the story is as simple as a dime and as old as the world – the original poster (OP) did their job well but one really bad day somehow managed to dislocate their shoulder. According to the doctors, the recovery was supposed to take about four weeks. Of course, there was no need to talk about any work at that time, but the boss supported the injured employee.

Every week, the author of the post told the manager about the progress in their healing process, and he, in turn, wished the subordinate a speedy recovery. This idyll ended a week before the expected return to work – the boss simply announced that the company had already replaced the employee, so there was nowhere for them to return now…

In the OP’s own words, they have always been as loyal as possible to their company, trying to work as efficiently as possible, not being late and providing good customer service. The response to this attitude was the dismissal at the most inopportune moment, after the boss had kept the employee under the illusion that they were needed over those three weeks, but in fact, obviously, was looking for a replacement. As soon as a replacement was found, the employee abruptly ceased to be needed. Nothing personal, just business…

Image credits: Linkedin Sales Solutions (not the actual photo) 

“Certainly, this situation looks ugly on the part of the employer,” says Alexei Shkurat, founder and owner of Peach art studio in Ukraine, with whom Bored Panda got in touch for a comment on the described case. “Loyalty is always a two-way street, and if a business expects staff to treat the company well and respectfully, it must, above all, ensure the same towards employees.”

“Yes, there can be completely different situations – for example, the workflow could not stand idle in the absence of this employee, but then the manager in any case should have warned the worker and at least given them the opportunity to look for a new job. Or taken a temporary replacement, for the recovery period. Then that would be fair. At least in my book, it looks like this,” Alexei presumes.

Commenters, of course, also united in support of the original poster, although the most they could give them in this situation was just encouraging words or useful advice. As we can see, the author actually received both. For example, people in the comments brought a lot of their own sad stories from work. And after all these stories, according to commenters, employers dare to complain that ‘no one wants to work anymore…’

As for useful advice, some commenters sincerely believe that the author of the post should take legal action against their former employer, because if things are exactly as described in the post, then it looks contradictive not only to common sense but also the law. “I’d contact your State Labor Department, followed by an attorney, for a free consultation. I’m fairly certain what your boss did is illegal,” one of the people in the comments wrote. The author of the post promised to follow this advice. After all, what else could they actually do…

In our difficult times, such situations occur, alas, very often. For example, the newly minted boss in this story of ours ranted for a long time about the lack of employee loyalty – until the company management fired him without any notice. And if you have also experienced or witnessed similar stories in your own life, please feel free to share them in the comments below this post – who knows, maybe your experience would be wholesome for someone too.

Commenters also shared their own similar stories, and suggested that the author take legal action against their ex-employer

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