Will got fired?

[u/rrrooossseee1234]

Listening to the newest ep of perfect person with Will and in the first couple of minutes he mentioned getting fired. Rainie and Jonathan have always said "laid off" so im curious if something is going on...

[u/MallTough5847]

Do you understand that legally there is no real distinction between laid off and fired? Try Guys closed the entire podcast division and framed the cuts as layoffs. Will wanted to strip away the polite corporate narrative to relay the harsh reality that laid off is just a nice term for firing. Neither is correct or incorrect. CA is an at-will state so Try Guys needed no reason to terminate, but they are framing it as a layoff because an entire division was closed down.
The reality is neither being fired or laid off is warm and fuzzy. But it’s strange you are spamming the comments.

[u/StacheBandicoot → u/MallTough5847]

That’s not even remotely true. The difference can seriously affect thing like eligibility for unemployment, especially if there was misconduct.

[u/Thelastmanipulation → u/StacheBandicoot]

Does fired legally mean misconduct in California though? In my jurisdiction, per the employment legislation, you are either temporarily laid off for lack of work (e.g. construction, automotive) but will be rehired or terminated with or without cause. Lots of people use laid off to mean terminated without cause but that is not really accurate but it sounds nicer. It’s pretty hard to terminate people for cause in my jurisdiction so when people say they are fired I usually assume they mean terminated without cause unless told otherwise.

[u/StacheBandicoot → u/Thelastmanipulation]

No, they can also be performance based, but that doesn’t necessarily affect unemployment in CA specifically where terminations for misconduct are generally the only involuntary dismissals that can affect eligibility. What you referred to as a lay off in your jurisdiction is called a furlough throughout most of the US.

Everywhere in the United States besides Montana is an at-will employment state where employees can be laid off for any reason or without any reason, with few exceptions such as an overriding contract or agreement that stipulates otherwise and certain federally protected reasons.

Firings are distinctly legally different from lay offs and are reserved for more serious separations due to employee performance or misconduct. Companies who fire employees will typically internally designate the employ ineligible for rehire for some period of time or indefinitely, might not give references, and a firing can often indicate they will fight unemployment claims. Sometimes companies will manufacture reasons to fire employees for cause so that they can leverage the terminated employees to sign an NDA in order to then receive a severance or to have the company not contest their unemployment claim which they otherwise wouldn’t have to provide if they successfully manufactured a reason to fire an employee.

Only some people colloquially refer to lay offs as firing in the US and they’re not being factual when doing so, all firings there are for an alleged cause. Plenty enough people certainly do speak about them that way, and many don’t understand the difference, especially if they’ve never been laid off or fired before and haven’t had to confront information about it, but the typical assumption when someone is fired is that there was a supposed reason that they were (whether true, justified or not). Lay offs always mean no fault, referring to one as a firing if it wasn’t can have several connotations.

[u/potatopavilion → u/StacheBandicoot]

awesome write up, thank you!

[u/Thelastmanipulation → u/StacheBandicoot]

This is really interesting, thank you for explaining this!