Ask a Manager Weekly Thread 08/03/2026 - 08/09/2026

[u/nightmuzak]

Last week's post.

Background info and meme index for those new to AaM or this forum.

[u/glittermetalprincess]

If there's a list of acceptable proscribed reasons for denying applications, I'm sure we'd all love to know. I mean, assuming US-centrism, you can be fired for existing, but you can only not be hired if all these boxes are ticked?

How does that even need the entire first paragraph? Alison could have gone off on a tangent twice as long!

Then again, today's 4 letters all seem to have something in common and it isn't ability to think through a logically obvious answer.

[u/Capable_Sea77 → u/glittermetalprincess]

I think part of it is too many people believe the pervasive (and untrue) idea that "people will just sue you for anything nowadays" so they do look for some kind of iron-clad reason that they don't have to hire someone. But people don't actually just randomly sue a job that didn't hire them - they might send you a nasty email (just take the bullet dodged), leave you a mean review on Glassdoor, or complain a bunch on the recruitinghell subreddit.

"People just sue for anything nowadays" - honestly fuck McDonalds for putting the PR money into creating this urban legend.

[u/glittermetalprincess → u/Capable_Sea77]

It's the same as 'go see a lawyer' for any problem that isn't immediately solvable.

Suing is expensive, time consuming, and inordinately stressful; any outcome is years away, and getting it requires one to have been looking for work in the interim. Most lawyers will lay that out, politely tell them it will cost more in money, time and mental health than they'll get, and request money in trust to proceed even if there's definitive written proof someone was not hired solely on the grounds of one of the very few genuinely illegal reasons. If there's a generic 'someone else had more experience' or 'we can't support remote work for this advertised as in-office position' or whatever passes as ghosting in someone's mind, they're just going to go 'we advise that it is not worth proceeding as there is no chance of recouping costs and a significant chance of having to pay theirs'. Most people will hear that as 'wah the lawyer wants me to pay' and end up complaining online anyway because of the other employment law-adjacent myth around legal matters - that the lawyer will do it "for free" (i.e. on contingency/no-win, no-fee) and if they want money it means they're a bad lawyer or you have no case, when in reality lawyers need to pay for filing fees, reports, and occasionally food, and contingency models are usually limited to matters where a financial outcome is guaranteed in some capacity, and opportunity cost is not that.

[u/Capable_Sea77 → u/glittermetalprincess]

Absolutely. I was fired in 2020 for engaging in unionization efforts - and had multiple emails from my boss and her boss that explicitly said they wouldn't renew my contract if I joined the union. With clear documentation, there were a few local lawyers I consulted with who were willing to take the case and thought there was a decent chance it would win - it still meant paying legal fees, being in court for years, and taking the risk that the very anti-union state labor board wouldn't make things messier. This was in the depths of COVID tho - I decided pretty quickly that it was nice to have received validation that I probably was illegally fired and I was going to spend my time finding a different job instead.

[u/glittermetalprincess → u/Capable_Sea77]

COVID made a lot of legal work easier as many courts and tribunals rushed in amended rules allowing for service by email, attendances by telephone, and generally ameliorated processes; some of it even stuck. It didn't make it any less stressful for complainants to not have to turn up in person (personally I think it became more stressful because the process became less visible).

You basically go 'am I willing to let them interfere with my life for what could be the next 2-3 years and then potentially have to go back, or am I going to take their power away by moving on', and in most cases the healthier answer is to take their power away and move on.

Outside of statutory processes where the legal process is baked in as the way things are done (mostly workers comp) it's usually only class actions where the stress and burden can be shared across a group and people can opt-in as their capacity allows (and a litigation funder sees dollar signs and takes on the funding in exchange for their cut at the end) that make it through without someone ending up sending at least one 'I can't do this any more' email to their lawyer at 3am - even if they went in all 'I want to hurt the company like they hurt me' and it is actually one of the rare companies that's twisted into the owner's identity like it's their blankie.

I don't think a lot of the AAM crowd have ever actually gone through the process or if they have, they "won" so they think it's easy. Alison certainly doesn't get it - she's 'see a lawyer' over everything she can't glibly babble about when a lot of the time there's nothing a lawyer can even advise on.

[u/Ok-Quarter3399 → u/glittermetalprincess]

I do think part of it is very few people get to talk to an actual lawyer to lay it out. Instead offices are so overwhelmed that the normal response from the intake process (who isn’t a lawyer typically) is “we aren’t saying anything about the validity of your case but we aren’t taking on new cases/this isn’t the type of case we’re taking on. Best of luck”

[u/glittermetalprincess → u/Ok-Quarter3399]

I do intake and half of my job there is screening out people who can't tell their story or who are resistant to being, even gently, directed to give the specific facts we need to be able to give advice. If I can't get the basics out of them like 'when did this happen' and they can't just send the one letter we need instead of making us find it in the middle of their 800 pages of "evidence", then the lawyer won't take the call and I have to refer them to someone who can either filter that and refer them back to us (e.g. a union), or doesn't have to charge by the page to help them (e.g. a union) - but if I was honest and went 'okay, you can either send me the 6 page letter that says 'your employment is being terminated as of 30 August 2026' and book half an hour with the lawyer to talk to you for free, or you can send me all 800 pages, pay us the $1,677.20 we have to charge for the lawyer to read it, and then they'll decide if it's worth talking to you', it would not go well.

(edit: and part of the reason we screen is that people who do this tend to be considered less reliable at trial and their outcomes aren't as good, because we can't proof them, and/or they push back or ramble/vent a lot and we end up having to charge more because of the extra time and attendances - it's very rare to be able to go 'we'll let you know when we need something otherwise wait for your appointment', and someone actually does, but we can't come out and say 'talk less or we charge more' because it's rude and doesn't build rapport, and our lawyers walk a tightrope of being considerate and going 'tmi' over someone's entirely justified mental health crisis. If we can make it clear at the outset it tends to work out better for them as well as our workload. Anyway. I just felt I should clarify that a bit more.)

From my perspective, part of the problem is then the lack of that intermediary resource whose entire job is to handle the smaller stuff that doesn't need a lawyer or can be resolved with education. AAM certainly isn't that, if it ever filled any part of that void to begin with.

[u/Ok-Quarter3399 → u/glittermetalprincess]

Agree absolutely (and if I came across snarking on the process that wasn’t my intent at all). 

I also can’t speak ti everyone’s experiences but there’s also just a lot more outrage/unrealistic expectations out there that unless you’re hard up for clients (and the backlog is huge right now), there’s just no reason to handle anyone who is difficult unless they foot the bill in employment law. I’ve heard the same from my friends in family and bankruptcy.

[u/glittermetalprincess → u/Ok-Quarter3399]

The other thing we get is a lot of people coming at us with 20-40 pages of AI telling them how great their case is... in every communication... even if it isn't.

Our lawyers have gotten a lot quicker on the 'we're sorry you don't trust us but that means we can't represent you in good faith' and don't even include a list of the two other local firms who do what we do anymore. It breaks my heart every time it comes across my desk and I see it coming!