[crooked-v]

> He was fired. It doesn't matter that people didn't intend for him to be, he was, it went through the system, it was a done deal. Paying people not in your employ is fraud, even under the best of intentions.

Somebody who is in your building, is doing work under your direction, and has not been told they are fired hasn't been fired. A judge in court for the lost wages would laugh you out of the room if you tried a "well but actually, the system..." argument in that situation.

[perl4ever]

...you never know these days if you are talking to someone on the Internet who believes "code is law".

[jacques_chester]

Judges, taken as a whole, tend to believe that law is law.

[nailer]

I had a similar situation where it was proven that law is law while contracting at nab, a bank in Australia, years ago.

- When I first started, it took months to get me added to the project phase to bill my time.

- When I was finally added, I couldn't bill it because that project phase was over

- Then a few months to find a solution, then I was asked to bill to the new project phase

- I couldn't bill my old time to the new project phase as it wasn't running in the time I first started.

The bank kept promising they'd work out a way for me together compensated for the time. They continued to do this after I ended the contract.

I kept chasing them, and they went quiet. Then they said they weren't paying me for the time I worked because I hadn't entered my time correctly, then blamed me for walking out the door before I'd been paid the money they owed.

I called a lawyer. nab responded as above. The lawyer told nab that Australian law doesn't care about their billing system - mentioning the specific law helped.

They paid all the money a week later. I should have asked for costs and interest too, but oh well.

[ubernostrum]

Somebody who is in your building, is doing work under your direction, and has not been told they are fired hasn't been fired.

They might be, or might not be. Constructive dismissal is a thing.

[pbhjpbhj]

No, being fired is when a person with authority tells you you're dismissed; it's an active and explicit form of dismissal.

Constructive dismissal is dismissal, for all intents and purposes, without being fired.

[ubernostrum]

Constructive dismissal is treated as "you quit, but you quit because the conditions imposed on you were such that you had no choice, and we will treat that as the company firing you rather than you voluntarily choosing to quit".