About 20 minutes ago I got off the phone with my department manager and was told my services are no longer needed. My department head said he wasn’t at liberty to discuss the reason why. I’m an at-will part-time employee for a university and do it as part of my classes. I’ve been working here for about 5 months and my relationships with everyone has been mostly positive, not super outspoken either.
This week I did some brief work in the PD office and must’ve been recognized by someone there. That person likely told the department manager what my past was and a few days later they decided to fire me. This comes only *three days after that, after many months without problems. So: I was suspended from school a few years ago due to legal charges against me, but it was ultimately stripped from my academic record and since I was a youthful offender it was also stripped from the legal record. My parents made sure of it. In court the charges were dropped to an offense (jaywalking) due to plea deal. I was never convicted. However, NONE of this should have been brought up since it is under a sealed record.
I genuinely doubt this is due to my performance at work. We’re somewhat overstaffed and a lot of my tickets are completed in a timely manner. Most of my coworkers like me and it’s not like I’ve stolen anything at work or crashed any company vehicles.
I fucking regret thinking a few years would separate me from my past actions. I thought I was able to move on and grow as a person but it finally caught up. I also wish this was because of funding or whatnot but I kept getting the “I’m not at liberty to say.” So I have to assume it’s because of my past.
Sorry for the paragraphs but I just needed to vent. This is the second time this has happened to me (first being the suspension) and I was actually relying on this job for the summer —i have no summer job lined up.
Sometimes when they say they are not at liberty to say it’s because they don’t want to give any reason. Even at will employees have some protections. If they give a reason, you can argue on some cases that it was not legal. If they give no reason, you’ve no case to make.
So I’d suspect it’s that more than any sealed past.
You could still make a case, but you’d need other evidence that it was likely the cause, like if you brought up a violation and they were like nah its okay, and you pressed them on it, and the next day you were fired, you could potentially make some sort of case of wrongful dismissal.
If the manager just wanted to sack him for no reason again, he would have said something that amounted to that. “I’m not at liberty to say” is the worst possible phrase he could have used if it was actually nothing, and I would expect a department manager to have some go-to throw away phrase he’d use if it was actually nothing. I agree it’s not really much to go on from the outside looking in, but taking OP at his words, it does feel kinda off.