by Darlene
(Albuquerque, NM)
I live in New Mexico. I was laid off in January and drawing New Mexico Unemployment.
I received a call from a temp agency for a position doing data entry. Turned out as payroll data entry for a landscape company. Due to it being summer they had a ton of employees, which were seasonal. The software for the data entry was not user friendly! The data entry involved locating & entering job numbers, figuring out the category of labor, job number, and with constant interruptions from the various Managers bring in current timecards for my signature as receiving.
I was recovering from cancer at the time of the call, but thought I would be fine doing data entry. Well as it turned out, I couldn’t do anything to please the office manager. I worked there about 8 days total Up to the time this happened I had worked 8 hr each day.
After working 11.5 hours one day, I was told I needed to stay until all of the data for the current payroll had been entered.
I ended up with had a major migrane partially due to bad lighting and the layout of the cubical, and told her I had to go home. She told me that she needed me to stay longer to continue with the data entry. I told her I could not. (I had worked straight thru lunch, eating at my desk, and could not stay there with my head pounding.
The next morning, I arrived at 7AM to continue the data input. She came in around 9:15 with a printout of all of the errors that I had made. At that point I told her “I think you and & I both know I am not a good fit for this position.” She looked at me with “daggers”.
I left the office after having her sign my weekly timesheet.
Long story short I was declined unemployment. What can I do?
I am older and have never drawn unemployment after working many years. Am I wrong to be upset? Do I have any recourse?
Hi Darlene,
Here’s the problem. When you took the job through a temp agency .. you became the employee of the temp agency .. not the client company you worked for.
It is the temp agency you should have gone to to express “the need for a different assignment”.
Although New Mexico doesn’t have a “temporary worker provision according to DOLETA (Table 5-3)
You still have either a voluntary quit or refusal of suitable work issue to contend with now.
Your recourse, is to appeal and the burden is now yours to prove good cause for quitting this subsequent work to access the benefits you had initially been allowed.
Another recourse is that you can contact that temp agency and ask for another assignment and if you’re lucky enough to get one after walking off a job.
The problem I see is that you didn’t do what you should have done before quitting to “preserve the employment by calling the temp agency and before you quit the client. You probably had some valid medical reasons, which if explained, might have prompted the agency to find another assignment, but as now .. all they have to do is tell the state ..
“The claimant voluntarily quit by walking off the job for a client company for unknown reasons. The claimant did not make this employer aware of any problems that may have existed with the assignment, thereby not allowing us an opportunity to resolve the problem with another more suitable assignment for continuing work.”
Bing .. bang .. boom.
I’m sorry Darlene .. I’m not hopeful.