Company lays off minimum-wage worker but still expects them to come in every day, doesn't provide severance: 'I am the only licensed person that can perform the specific type of services'

What if you were laid off… but you still had to report to the office? Would you?

Nobody wants to be laid off. It's one of the things we spend our careers trying to avoid. We try to always have something cooking on the back burner, ready to go if and when we get cut loose. It can be a devastating event, especially if you have people depending on you. You might feel leveraged, and like you might lose everything if you lose your job. It's not an easy job market out there, and it's harder when there's a ticking clock right behind you. But one of the things we hope for in that situation is that our companies will have our backs when push comes to shove. Even if they have to let us go, we would hope we'd be supported by generous severance packages. Or at the very least, some severance.

Another thing we'd probably rightfully expect is that we won't have to report to work. That's kind of the whole point. You're not getting paid anymore, so you don't have to show up. Your role has been eliminated, so there's no reason to clock in in the mornings. Then you can spend your days looking for another job. Or, heaven forbid, you can rest for a few days before you hit the ground running. But neither of those things happened in this situation, and the employee was left wondering what exactly they should do and how they should do it.

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Their company decided to keep them on the hook even after their position had been eliminated. Turns out they hadn't thought far enough in advance, and they had to keep them on to provide certain services. You can't really do that, though, if you've laid someone off, right? You kind of lose the ability to rely on someone for their work when you let them go. But they wanted their cake and to eat it too. So the employee reached out to the internet for a little guidance on how to get through this. Read on for the full story and see what they had to say.
Was laid off effective immediately but still expected to work. (No severance, minimum wage hourly employee)

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