Disciplinary/Resigning help

jobbingmusician

Have you got any accumulated holiday? If they 'owe' you holiday you can normally take this out of your notice period. So even if you have to give a week's notice, you can more or less walk out of the door. MAKE SURE THEY PAY YOU FOE ANY OWED HOLS!

In your position I would have a real go at them about their confidentiality. They should NOT be keeping conf files on the shared drive without a password! :mad:

If you want to see what reference they are giving you, get a friend to write on computer-generated 'headed' paper and ask for a reference for you Then you can decide whether to use them as a reference or not. Perfectly acceptable just to drop them from your CV, IMHO.

alanobrien

An old employer is unlikely to give you a bad reference these days as there is to much potential for litigation if they get it wrong. They would normally just not respond to a request or write a factual note stating yes X worked here for Y time. Thats about it.

You current employer is probably in breach of the data protection act for having such sensitive private information unsecured anyway.

flis21

Bargainbooty wrote:

Hmm yes Georgina, I can see your point. Thinking about it, they may just tell me to pee off anyway but I want to do everything by the book in my rezzy letter. So am I right in thinking that this friday coming will be my last official day?

Thanks!

If you handed your notice in tomorrow, next Mon would be your last day.

flis21

jobbingmusician wrote:

Have you got any accumulated holiday? If they 'owe' you holiday you can normally take this out of your notice period. So even if you have to give a week's notice, you can more or less walk out of the door. MAKE SURE THEY PAY YOU FOE ANY OWED HOLS!

Just be careful if you have used more holiday than you are entitled to. My work told me today I have to repay them £173 as I have had 5 more days holiday than I would have been entitled to!

Bargainbooty

Well I've only accumalated (sp?) 2 days so far I think>? I haven't had any holiday as I've only been there a couple of months

flis21

Bargainbooty wrote:

Well I've only accumalated (sp?) 2 days so far I think>? I haven't had any holiday as I've only been there a couple of months

Well, if you have two days holiday, hand your notice in tomorrow, but tell them that your last working day will be Thursday, as you will take Friday and Monday as your holiday days you are entitled to!

Bargainbooty

Thank you all so much for being so helpful and nice to me. I really do appreciate all your posts and it has helped me become more focused on the task in hand.

Once again, many thanks!

Cazzywazzywoo

Of course you may be entitled to some sick pay.
With the stress of the situation you could self certfy stress and take the rest of the week off
Cazzy

Astaroth

Of cause the problem of "not mentioning" employment on your CV is that things look a little odd to HR when you hand in your P45 to the new employers and it has your previous employer as someone who isnt on your records - likewise if you say you havent worked from April but your P45 shows you have earned £6,000 then again things wont stack up for them.

As to notice, if you have a weeks notice then it will mean you need to work for one week - hand notice in on tuesday, finish on monday. Someone asked what can they do if you dont work your notice, well as someone said ACAS said on a previous thread, they can sue you for the losses you cause by not working your notice.... generally it would be a little over 1.5x your salary (ie the cost of them having to pay overtime to someone to cover your shift) but it could be more if they have to get a temp in or if there is no one who can do your work and so the company actual makes large losses (obviously dependant on your job). The reality is that very few companies sue people that dont work notice and generally it is more senior people that it happens to but you should be aware that they would be entitled to do so.

I personally would put them on my CV if you were to leave and allow a company to reference them if they desire. As others have said it is exceptionally rare that anyone will give a bad reference because of the risk of litigation when there is no benefit to them (other than possibly a personal vendetta). It is more common for a company to refuse a reference (which is taken as meaning it is bad by most people) or to simply give the facts. A gowing proportion of companies would consider a refusual by you to allow them to reference a previous employer to mean it is bad (and with my employers you simply would be turned down for the job on the spot) so if you allow them to reference it isnt going to be any worse than you saying no and may be better.

You are entitled to the holiday you have earned to date however the company does not have to give you the days off you request - if they are unable to give you the days off though they do have to pay you for them on top of the normal salary you have earned.

Unfortunately you dont say what the "unpleasent reading was" to really judge if you are over reacting or not.... likewise you say it was correspondence between "the company and these people" - who are "these people"? The people who the file was named after? If that was the case then surely you had already seen the letter/ file with your name on it?

Gross misconduct does sound a little OTT for what you have done but then we dont have all the details.... for example on our public drive at work we have a folder called "personal" and within that a folder for each person on the team. These folders are designed for work related files but which arent specific to a project/ duty and arent personal personal (so mainly used ad hoc reports your asked to write or such). The very title of the original folder says that they arent something you are supposed to be poking arround in.

Bargainbooty

Astaroth wrote:

Of cause the problem of "not mentioning" employment on your CV is that things look a little odd to HR when you hand in your P45 to the new employers and it has your previous employer as someone who isnt on your records - likewise if you say you havent worked from April but your P45 shows you have earned £6,000 then again things wont stack up for them.

As to notice, if you have a weeks notice then it will mean you need to work for one week - hand notice in on tuesday, finish on monday. Someone asked what can they do if you dont work your notice, well as someone said ACAS said on a previous thread, they can sue you for the losses you cause by not working your notice.... generally it would be a little over 1.5x your salary (ie the cost of them having to pay overtime to someone to cover your shift) but it could be more if they have to get a temp in or if there is no one who can do your work and so the company actual makes large losses (obviously dependant on your job). The reality is that very few companies sue people that dont work notice and generally it is more senior people that it happens to but you should be aware that they would be entitled to do so.

I personally would put them on my CV if you were to leave and allow a company to reference them if they desire. As others have said it is exceptionally rare that anyone will give a bad reference because of the risk of litigation when there is no benefit to them (other than possibly a personal vendetta). It is more common for a company to refuse a reference (which is taken as meaning it is bad by most people) or to simply give the facts. A gowing proportion of companies would consider a refusual by you to allow them to reference a previous employer to mean it is bad (and with my employers you simply would be turned down for the job on the spot) so if you allow them to reference it isnt going to be any worse than you saying no and may be better.

You are entitled to the holiday you have earned to date however the company does not have to give you the days off you request - if they are unable to give you the days off though they do have to pay you for them on top of the normal salary you have earned.

Unfortunately you dont say what the "unpleasent reading was" to really judge if you are over reacting or not.... likewise you say it was correspondence between "the company and these people" - who are "these people"? The people who the file was named after? If that was the case then surely you had already seen the letter/ file with your name on it?

Gross misconduct does sound a little OTT for what you have done but then we dont have all the details.... for example on our public drive at work we have a folder called "personal" and within that a folder for each person on the team. These folders are designed for work related files but which arent specific to a project/ duty and arent personal personal (so mainly used ad hoc reports your asked to write or such). The very title of the original folder says that they arent something you are supposed to be poking arround in.

The folder was the personnel folder which I actually stumbled on whilst looking for other files. The files I read were timekeeping logs and errors that had been made by my predessors and how long they had took to do a task, etc.. Also sacking letters and instant dismissal letters. What I read confirmed to me that it wasn't just me who had had problems with the boss. ('These people' are the people who had my job before btw)

Anyway, I did take my notice in but I chickened it. I did however have a word with my manager and he asked me to reconsider and stay until the end of the week then make up my mind...not sure what to do now