Unlawfully Termed? in Texas

[Chorizo]

I work for a company that I have had issues wuth since day one. For starters there was a two week training course that i was put in and then tossed to the wolves. I tried my best to pick up as much as i could and even went to the district manager on several occasions requsting that i be transffered to a different location so that i could work under a tenured manager. Iwas denied due to the area locations being short staffed. The store I was in also had a store manager that was fired shortly after i got there. I was left to run the store alone without any assistance and support. I did not know the policies regarding this company because my training was basically learning the basic operations. The manager that got terminated left a handful of issues that needed to be dealt with, such as an associate that went on maternity leave, she came back from maternity leave and was terminated out of the system she never recieved any of her time that was owed to her(about three weeks), another issue was an associate who had an injury and went out for two weeks because of the injury. The paper work was never sent in for this associate and to this day has still yet to be paid. Anyway I brought these issues to the H.R. attention, he seemed not to be bothered by any of this after numerous attempts to talk to him email and phone. I finally got tired of the associates asking me when they were going to get paid. I told them i would talk to his boss and find out. I emailed the HRRM and let her know what was going on, shortly after he called me yelling and telling me that i should not have done that. He yelled at me for a while and then hung up the phone in my face. I heard nothing back from him until about three weeks ago when he came into the store and was doing his once yearly audit. He was checking the associates punches and saw that i had removed .57 minutes off an assocaites time. He asked me about this and i told him that The associate had discussed this with another are supervisor and they had agreed to take this off. I was made aware of the situation that sunday when i was to release the time , the area supervisor had told me to take the .57 minutes off because she had let and forgot to puch out on time. I did so not thinking there would be any issues. until he stated that that was against the law and that i could be terminated for it. I told him that i did not know it was against the law and that no one had ever told me/trained me regarding the company policies. he said that he would get back to me in a couple of days. On saturday I came to work and the current manager told me i needed to leave that i was suspended for doing what i had done. I left becasue i did not know what else to do. I then was told to come in on tuesday to talk to the D.M., which I did and he told me that they were going to let me go because the H.R. guy said i violated company policy. i was never written up or counseled on any issues ever at this emploer. I have an employee hand book and do not see anything regarding this policy. I believe i was malicously fired because of the issues that i brought to the attention of the HRRM andthe argument that i got into with the H.R. guy, what should i do? or am i just out of luck.

[Texas709]

The latter--although it sounds like it may be good luck in the long run. I don't understand why you'd want to work for and with people who operate at that level. Use what you gained here, and move on. No doubt the firing was "malicious" from your perspective, but malice is not illegal.

Texas is defined as an "employment at will" state. This means that the employment relationship between employer and employee exists by the agreement of both parties. This gives the employee the right to quit at any time or for the employer to terminate the employee at any time and for any legal reason. The only illegal reasons in Texas are for FMLA covered issues, and discrimination based on protected categories. You don't mention any of these factors,

[cbg]

Agree - what you describe is evidence of a company that is very poorly run, but the facts as you have presented them do not meet the definition of a wrongful termination.