Bad Bosses·
FIRED WITHOUT WARNING
A remote Texas worker is abruptly fired by a California company, losing access and facing delayed PTO pay and post-termination demands for knowledge transfer.
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The firing came with no warning and no access left to log in.
"I was fired on Thursday," the poster wrote, saying the company was in California while they worked remotely from Texas. They described it as "no warnings, just sudden loss of all my access," and said a phone call later confirmed what had already happened: they were out.
The timing made the whole thing stranger. The poster had been scheduled to train a colleague on Friday, but that plan vanished as soon as the termination did. "That's canceled given I'm being fired," the manager told them, cutting off the handoff before it started.
Still, the poster did not slam the door. They said they had security authentications coming to their personal cellphone and offered to turn them over. They also asked about accrued vacation time, noting their last vacation had been in August 2024. The company, the poster said, was "too cheap to get a work phone," so the codes were tied to their own device.
The manager's first answer was vague. He said "he'll think about it and call me back."
When he did call back, the deal got even more specific. According to the poster, the manager said "he'll pay me only for two weeks vacation," told them to "consider myself on vacation now," and added that payment would arrive later. "He's paying me AFTER two weeks on the next pay cycle," the poster wrote, repeating the manager's explanation. In the same conversation, the manager said he would "will give me a glowing reference for my next employer" if the poster handed over the remaining access and answered a few basic questions for a colleague.
Then the story shifted again.
After that, the manager changed course and said the poster still "owe them knowledge transfer/training during that period," even though the poster had already been terminated. The request was no longer framed as a favor tied to a reference or vacation pay. It was a demand for work after the firing.
Days passed, and the poster says the money still had not come through. "I haven't been paid for my accrued PTO yet," they wrote, asking whether they had grounds to file a complaint with the California Labor Board over unpaid PTO, final pay, and the post-termination demands.