Sometimes employees too easily confuse who gets to call the legal shots.  Believing that their job is an entitlement, some workers try to take the law into their own hands. They are often mistaken. This is the tale of one employee who learned this lesson the hard way.
Working out of the Toronto-area offices of software developer VoiceGenie Technologies, Crinu Iliescu quickly wore out his welcome. Hired only 15 months earlier as a software QA manager, Iliescu swiftly lost the firm’s trust after his response to a manager’s email accusing him of underperformance. Iliescu wrote his boss, the HR manager and the president with five demands he required them to meet before he would return to work.
In Daniel Lublin’s weekly Metro Column, he discusses the case of Crinu Iliescu, who was viewed as “abandoning” his job after refusing to meet his employer’s requirements to improve his performance.   The full column can be read here and the case can be read here.
The case stands for the proposition that, while employees do retain certain rights, rejecting a reasonable performance improvement plan is usually a poor option.
Even if such a plan is imposed in bad faith (which often does occur), protest the plan in writing and continue to work in the meantime. You retain the right to complain at a later time without jeopardizing your own continued employment.
Daniel A. Lublin is a partner at the employment law firm Whitten & Lublin LLP, who specializes in the law of dismissal.