quit job, but employer had unfair work practices

by John

(Michigan)

I quit my job as a department manager at a supermarket chain. I accepted this transfer to a new store because it was a department that was in in disarray. To make a long story short I fixed the department completely. However once it was fixed I was basically doing all he work myself. It takes about 160 labor hours to run the department and I was doing about 80% of all the work. The people that were working for me were basically just showing up and collecting a paycheck. I constantly told the managers above me that I needed some competant people and that it was too much to handle on my own but they never addressed the concern in 4+ months working there. Not to mention there was several instances where they asked me to work off the clock to get the job done. Can I still collect unemployment?

Hi John,

Whether you get unemployment is dependent on whether you can prove that your reason for quitting would make any other “reasonable person” quit their job and of course proving good cause is done by allowing the opportunity to “correct” the problem.

In your case .. The “problem” was basically, your complaint about the quality of the people you managed and managing people was your job.

The only problem that I think might be attributable to the employer is “working off the clock” and possibly the employer’s refusal to allow you to progress through the “progressive discipline policy” that manager are usually able to do when it comes to dealing with subordinates’ performance????

Sometimes good cause to quit is all a matter of perspective and if you want to be able to get benefits for quitting .. the reasonable person standard used to judge it, is your basic problem.