Just the other day I read a story in one of our publications about Kara Jorud. Kara worked for the retailer Michaels as a store manager beginning in 2001. By all accounts, she was an exemplary manager and a hard worker. Her job required her to work extremely long hours, including weekends.
In late 2007, Kara began to experience serious health issues that were difficult to diagnose. After she informed her district manager about the problems, his treatment of her began to deteriorate. Specifically, she alleged that he:
- denied requests for time off to which she was entitled,
- gave the store poor grades regardless of its condition, and
- placed impossible demands on her and became angry when they weren’t accomplished.
So I ask, what type of person treats someone this way? I’m sure Kara was concerned about her health. She was likely frightened by the unknown as her doctors struggled with a diagnosis. But instead of responding with compassion and understanding, her manager provided additional stress.
Kara’s struggles didn’t end there, nor did her manager’s moronic behavior. In July 2008, she was diagnosed with stage II breast cancer. After she informed her district manager of her diagnosis, his treatment of her worsened. What a gem this guy must be.
Kara had a lumpectomy to remove the cancerous mass, but the doctors were not able to get all of the cancer. Kara would need additional time off for another surgery. Imagine her state of mind in learning that the cancer remained in her body and she would have to endure another surgery. Surely her manager would be moved by her plight and respond with compassion now.
Nope. When Kara informed her manager of the need for a second surgery, he became very upset and angry. What’s more, within a week of the second surgery, he pressured her to return to work. Like the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz, this guy needs a heart!
So Kara agreed to return to work early on Friday, September 15, even though she wasn’t physically ready. The following Monday, the district manager visited Kara’s store and wanted to know why she hadn’t fixed all the problems that had arisen during her five-week absence. He told her that “this store has to run” in spite of her sickness and that she might as well get her resume together. This guy is truly unbelievable!
Not long after that incident, Kara informed her manager that she was scheduled to have chemotherapy treatment on Friday, September 26. He again became angry and ordered her to be at work the Monday after chemotherapy. When she suffered major side effects and informed her manager that she was unable to work weekends after chemo treatments, he responded that she needed to work and that they couldn’t lose any more time with her. I know, it’s hard to believe, but I’m not making this stuff up!
Eventually, Kara was able to return to work. On October 13, a large delivery truck was scheduled to deliver merchandise, but there wasn’t room at the store to receive the delivery. Because of her condition, she had her fiancé and his son come to the store with her on a Sunday to help make room for the truckload of merchandise. On October 16, the day before Kara’s next scheduled chemotherapy treatment, she was terminated for violating Michaels’ policy against having unauthorized people in the store and a variety of lesser violations of store policies.
Not the happy ending you were hoping for? Well, try this on for size. Kara sued Michaels and won. The jury found both Michaels and the manager guilty of interfering with Kara’s Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) rights and not acting in good faith. The jury also found that Michaels failed to accommodate, harassed, and retaliated against Kara. It ordered the company to pay her $4 million for emotional pain and mental anguish and an additional $4 million in punitive damages. In sum, the jury awarded Kara more than $8.2 million in damages, and that does not include the amount of front pay, attorneys’ fees, and court costs to which she may also be entitled.
How does a company allow a manager to treat someone like this? What kind of work environment exists in a company that would allow an employee to suffer through what Kara did while battling such a serious illness?
A company is a community. We spend more of our waking hours with one another than we do with our own families. We should care for and support one another in times of need.
You just read Kara’s story and my guess is that your heart went out to her as mine did when I read about her situation. How could someone who worked with her not react with compassion?
So let me restore your faith in humankind. We, too, have a woman who is battling breast cancer at our company. She’s valiantly fighting her cancer on a daily basis. Like Kara did, she is going through chemotherapy. Her treatments make coming to work difficult, yet she makes every effort to be at work and do her job. Some days she’s more successful than others, but everyone here recognizes her dedication and admires her strength.
This morning, I learned that one of her coworkers had given her 40 hours of paid sick time out of her accrued time off. She wasn’t asked to do this. The two of them don’t work in the same department, nor am I aware that they’re close friends. It’s just that this woman felt compelled to help a coworker out when she needed it.
That’s a wonderful gesture and says a lot about the person willing to give up her time off in order to help someone else. But it’s also the spirit that we should all have toward the people we work with. There are enough bad things going on in the world around us every day. We certainly shouldn’t have to worry that the very people we spend our days with are going to make our lives worse. The exact opposite should be true. The people we work with side-by-side should be the ones we can count on in our time of need. Make sure you’re that type of coworker.
I love this blog. You inspire me to be a better person, which is saying something considering I consider myself to be somewhat of a cynic. It would not surprise me to find that you have people lined out the door on those rare occasions you have a position available. Keep up the great work – I depend on it!
Carol, I’m glad you enjoy the blog and appreciate your kind comments. Thanks for reading my ramblings!
Thanks Dan. We truley appreciate the opportunity to serve our both customers & our peers with the same kind of exemplary kindness that your articel inspires. You have become a fine writer in your own & in some fine company here in the Blogs of M. Lee Smith Publishers.
Does your company have a written policy about donating leave time to another employee? I have been looking for one as we have people wanting to donate vacation time to others.
Dan, thank you for letting us know about this case. I’m appalled by Kara’s manager’s behavior! What a creep! Do you know where this happened? I hope it wasn’t in the Nashville area, since I shop at the Michael’s stores here. I’d hate to financially support that guy’s territory.
I find this manager’s conduct deplorable! As this is an HR centered publication, I would be interested in HR’s role in this EE relations issue. Questions I would be interested in knowing were:
No one else knew or could sense how this person treated the district manager’s direct reports?
Is this the type of interpersonal skill level they seek for a district manager (results and only results)?
When HR was confronted with the information to terminate Kara, what information was presented to them and how was a review of the alleged facts conducted?
When FMLA information was presented to Kara, was there no follow-up plan with the employee during their time-off as to how they were doing?
While this mistreatment was being perpetrated upon her, did Kara in-turn contact anyone else in management to discuss the unreasonable demands being placed upon her?
I wrote the original article that Dan referred to in his blog post. Our understanding of exactly what happened to Kara Jorud is limited by published reports. It appears that Jorud started by contacting Michaels’ EAP about the harassment, but the EAP never returned her call. She then contacted the vice president of operations, who flew into Boca Raton (which is where her store was) to discuss her complaint and offered to provide an accommodation. However, it appears that nothing came of that meeting other than that her manager’s treatment of her worsened and the company’s HR director scolded her for going to the VP. There is very little information about exactly how the termination went down apart from the fact that other employees were not terminated for similar types of policy violations.
Julie Athey
Editor – FMLA Compliance Bulletin
Hi Darrel,
I’m the HR Manager at M. Lee Smith Publishers. I wanted to get back to you in regards to your request for our written policy about donating time.
Honestly, we don’t have a written “policy.” We’ve made it known through communication with employees that they can donate time to coworkers in need, but we don’t have anything formal about it. The employee who wants to donate time simply lets me or our payroll specialist know and the time is transferred from one bank to another. We don’t have a set limit to the amount of time that can be transferred either. We’ve considered adding a note (saying in a sentence or two that this is allowed and what the process is) when we update our employee handbook in the near future, but the truth is we try to stay away from formal policies and procedures with items like this so we can keep some flexibility in place for our employees.
Hope this helps!
— Beth Greene
We have a manager very similar to this. His supervisors let him get by with it because his department produces better and more than his counterparts. I can’t seem to make them understand that the “better and more” will never offset the damages when the lawsuit comes. I am hoping that a copy of this article, strategically forwarded to the right people, may have an impact.
Please keep giving us your very wise advice, Dan.
I understand that this regional manager is still working for Michael’s.