can my daughter collect unemployment benefits after only being employed for 6 months at a company?

by michelle

(florida)

my daughter had been working at wendy’s fast food corp for 6 months as of this week…she has had problems/personality conflicts with a particular manager…probably due to jealousy or other non-work related reasons…this manager/supv fired one of her close friends more recently ..within the past week for being sick on the job and needing to go home..she was vomiting at work in the back room…she clocked out without permission to leave because she was sick and they denied her to leave…my daughter, however is worried that they are going to fire her due to a possible “list” that is supposedly listing the names of employees due to be terminated…the reason they gave her for possibility of being fired was one of insubordination due to refusing to dress in a “wendy” costume for customer svc/sales….she has done it many times before…and she refuses now based on the fact that the sexual comments that she has been receiving while wearing the costume particularly make her uncomfortable with the task…they have asked all of the other girls employed there to dress in the costume and all of them have told them absolutely not….that they would not wear it…these girls were not made to wear it at all…and now they are trying to threaten my daughter with firing her for doing the same…i don’t think they have a leg to stand on with this situation…i told her to ask them for her job description in writing before agreeing again to dress in the costume…when they can produce this or her contract/agreement that she signed when first employed then they have the right to request that she wear it…not until then…they have also tried to hire several people to come in and work based on the purpose of wearing the wendy costume…and all of them have refused so far…which tells me that the managers are having a hard time with the issue and decided to make an example of my daughter with the issue…i am not familiar with the laws in florida at this time…am doing some research tho…really appreciate any help u can give me:)thank you very much.

Hi Michelle,

Let’s get the can she collect UI for 6 months of employment question out of the way.

This is a monetary eligibility question because Florida requires you have sufficient wages in two quarter of your base period to be monetarily eligible. If she were fired tomorrow and filed a claim her base period would be 1/1/08 through 12/31/08. Florida’s base period is the first 4 of the last 5 COMPLETED quarters. The minimum wages needed to qualify can be found at the USDOL.

I have a link to this on this page. It’s the one labeled “unemployment requirements”.

Your daughter like almost every American is working in “at will employment”.

The only kind of agreement she has is the employer handbook. I’ll bet one of the rules in that book include you must wear the Wendy’s uniform.

It seems to me that the issue is that this is a New? uniform that must be sexually suggestive. Get yourself right on over the the EEOC and start reading. If males are not being required to wear this uniform, that would be discrimination.

Secondly, your friends daughter that was fired for clocking out and going home after being denied to go home. I think that is a health concern. For goodness sake, we’re talking FOOD here. Even if she didn’t want to go home I think the employer should have REQUIRED her to go home. I think denying her leave to go was irresponsible and totally unreasonable of the employer.