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Comment by PaulRobinson | Hacker News Reader

Attitudes like this are why trade unions fought for employment laws.

I'm absolutely disgusted by the number of people here saying it's her fault that whilst sat in an ICU she was terminated.

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It is not the case that people at Yelp find it great joy in firing people. When a person did not turn up for work for three days some HR manager gleefully typed out a termination later and hifived all his co-workers. I don't think that is the case. Hiring someone costs money and so does termination.

Unless I know the Yelp's side of the story I wouldn't buy her version. It is possible that she failed to inform her superiors properly. It is possible that she has a long history of staying absent from work. It is possible that she was terminated for entirely different reasons and her being in a difficult situation is a pure co-incident.

When terminated people get angry. They say all sort of things.

  > It is possible that she has a long history of staying absent from work.

She did. She'd only been working there from December, used up all her sick-days while still in training, and missed even more days in the following months. One time she missed work because she couldn't find her car keys. It sounds like her manager got fed up and that was the end of it.

Being a single parent is hard.

"used up all her sick days" ... the whole idea that sick days are something you can run out of is so .. wrong.

Well, to be honest some countries don't have unjustified sick days, you can take unlimited ones, but with a doctor's note, otherwise it's taken out of your pay

I think a key difference here is paid sick leave versus unpaid sick leave. I think companies should allow more unpaid sick leave, but if we allow unlimited paid sick leave, no one would ever go to work.

It's almost like that through all of Europe (possibly with a limit like 8 months in the last 12). You need a doctor's note however.

Yeah, Japan doesn't have sick days at all, they are called, literally, holidays!

  > One time she missed work because she couldn't find her car keys.

You mean she was late because her 3 yr old child hid her keys in the hopes of spending more time with his mother. Completely unacceptable indeed.

  >Completely unacceptable indeed.

It's the kind of thing.....if it happens once, it's no big deal. If little things keep happening like that throughout the month, then there's probably something you need to fix.

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