Opinion ID: 615269
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Twigg's Termination

Text: On April 1, 2008, Sade sent an e-mail to Cotton expressing her expectation that Twigg would return to work the following day: I have not heard that Denice's [short-term disability] is approved past today so I assume she will be at work tomorrow. If anyone knows anything different please let me know. (Aplt.App. at 151.) The next day, Cotton responded by informing Sade that, according to MetLife, Twigg had not applied for an extension of her short-term disability benefits past April 1, 2008. Twigg did not return to work on April 2, nor did she come in on April 3 or 4. Moreover, Twigg did not call her supervisors to report her absences on those days. Thus, Twigg's absences on April 2, 3, and 4 constituted absences on three consecutive working days without proper notification, in violation of HBC's Rules of Conduct. As noted above, the presumptive discipline for Twigg's violation was termination, but HBC's rules provided management with the discretion to determine whether termination was warranted under the circumstances. Kathy Sade made the decision to terminate Twigg, with some input from the HR department. On April 7, 2008, Sade sent a termination letter to Twigg via certified mail. The letter informed Twigg that she was terminated as of April 7, 2008, for violating Rule 1 of HBC's Rules for Personal Conduct. The post office first attempted to deliver this letter on April 9, 2008, but Twigg did not pick it up until April 17. During her deposition, Sade was asked why she chose to terminate Twigg for the unreported absences in April when she had discretion not to impose termination as a sanction and when she had previously not taken action for unreported absences in March (i.e., the absences when Twigg's status was FMLA pending). Sade explained that HBC was in the process of reviewing Twigg's performance evaluations for the past year and had determined that Twigg was going to be given a low enough rating that she would be placed on a Performance Improvement Plan when she returned from leave. The low rating was based on a decline in Twigg's work performance, excessive tardiness, Twigg's failure to log on to the phone system as she was required to do, and various other things. ( Id. at 206.) According to Sade, Twigg's performance issues influenced the decision not to depart from the presumptive discipline of termination. ( Id. at 207 (These [issues] were considered because [Twigg] had a failure to report and I was not going to look the other way because she was going to be placed on a Performance Improvement Plan.).)