When an employee isn’t performing well, management is often left with no choice but to fire them.

What would you do if your boss wasn’t happy with your performance, so he fired you, but in the termination letter, he offered you 20 days of pay rather than the 6 that you were entitled to?

That is what happened to the employee in this story, so after talking to an attorney, he demanded that he get the full 20 days of pay even when his boss tried to back out of it.

Personally, I think his boss went above and beyond for this guy, and he is paying for the kindness. Read through the full story and see who you think is at fault.

Boss firing me without a warning and messing up the termination

I worked for a small company for the last 2 years as a Software Developer.

Everybody makes mistakes.

And with small I mean, that I was the only employee, so for many projects my boss had, I wrote the main part of the code base.

In march, I made a mistake in one of the updates and from then on, my boss made it a habit, to yell at me at least once every day and tell me, how stupid I am.

Honestly, it was really nice of the manager to warn him about losing his job.

Additionaly, he started to call me outside of my working hours, to demand fixes for problems that at the Most part were his own mistakes (to be fair, my code quality started to go downhill after I had several mental breakdowns thanks to behaviour).

At the start of May, he said to me, that he doesnt want to fire me, but would recommend, that I find another job in the next month.

His work must have really gotten bad.

So, I applied to several companies and was waiting for the responses, when he decided, to terminate me nonetheless 2 weeks later.

He wrote a termination letter and sent it to my home address, but didnt say a word to me. So, I was quite shocked, when I recieved the letter, which stated that I was fired, starting July the first and that I should take my remaining 20 vacation days (which is the rest of my annual leave) in June.

Was the boss giving him more paid time than required?

But in Germany (where I work), the employer is only obliged, to give you the rest of your annual leave if you worked MORE than 6 months in the company for this year.

Additionaly, an important project, which I had been working on since February was due in mid-June and not even close to finished because my boss had prioritized tickets from other projects.

Oh, his boss didn’t mean to give him that much extra time off.

So, I wrote my boss, that I would like to take the vacation days immediately, as written in the termination, but if he needed help for finishing the current project, I would be willing to have the remaining vacation days be paid out to me.

As soon as I sent the message, I saw in the chat program, that he was typing. He answered, that the number of vacation days in the letter of termination was a “minor spelling mistake” and that I only had 6 days left.

He is going to get paid for all of those days after all.

After a quick chat with an attorney (friend of my parents), who started laughing when I told him of my bosses reaction, I wrote my boss a formal mail, in which I informed him, that I would definitely take the vacation days as stated in the letter.

And, because the termination also stated that the remaining vacation time will not be paid out, I will withdraw the regarding offer.

This is really going to hurt the company.

The next week, he grudgingly accepted the 20 vacation days.

And, I will never forget the expression of defeat in his face at the last day when he realised that the project he took a loan for was about to phenomally fail because I was the only one working on it and he didnt even try to understand how it works (his Slogan always was: As Long as it works, I dont care).

Honestly, I feel bad for the boss. It seems like he was trying to do right by an employee who wasn’t performing well, and now it is going to cost him.

Read the comments below to see what you think about it.

This commenter thinks his boss was awful.

Wow, this would be awful.

Not all companies can afford this, though.

If you enjoyed this post, check out this story about a contractor who flew along way and spent 3 days on a fix only to find a breaker that needed to be flipped.

This commenter should take full advantage of the situation.

Things worked out really well for this commenter’s brother.

His boss warned him that he would be fired, but it happened sooner than he expected. Some people seem to hate bosses because they tell them what to do.

I honestly feel bad for the manager in this story, but it seems that I’m in the minority.