A request for conventional termination refused
It was before the lockdown. Guillaume Chevalier aspired to a change of life, more natural and less urban. With his family, he had the project to buy a campsite in black Périgord. At the time, he was a manager in a company that no longer corresponds to his values: he participated, among other things, in setting up restaurants in motorway service areas. As permitted by law, he then offers his employer to negotiate a contractual termination. And there is the cold shower.
“I was categorically refused. But there was no question for me of resigning because to set up my project, I had an imperative need to receive unemployment benefits”, he remembers. Which is completely legal since the conventional termination device provides for this type of reason.
Job abandonment orchestrated by the employer
His employer does not go overboard and tells him that the only way to break his contract is that he abandon his post. “It’s called a company-orchestrated job abandonment. With my manager, we organized the way to replace me, the important deadlines not to be missed… ”he recalls bitterly.
One Monday morning, Guillaume Chevalier no longer goes to the office. He receives one, two, three letters of formal notice to return to work or to justify his absence. “I had been advised not to answer. So they remained a dead letter., he says. One day, he receives a letter summoning him to an interview prior to dismissal. The classic procedure in the context of job abandonment. He did not show up there anymore and ended up receiving his dismissal letter for serious misconduct. So no severance pay.
It was violent, I felt like I was being punished. I had spent three years in this box and I left like a thief. Without even being able to organize a farewell party. In my balance of any account, there were the certificates to be provided to Pôle emploi. It was the main thing because I could continue my project by securing it a little. But still, see what I had to accept to get it. I had the impression of prostituting myself to finally recover these documents. Asking me to give up my job so as not to pay me severance pay when the legislator has precisely put in place contractual terminations for that, is simply shameful.
Guillaume Chevalier, 48 years old, now manager of Le Pech Charmant campsite, Les Eyzies (Dordogne)You might be interested in:
A bad memory
Today with his wife, Guillaume Chevalier has abandoned the stress of Lyon and the many business trips all over France, for an outdoor and more natural life in Les Eyzies, in the Dordogne. His wife also gave up her job in the service of a candidate for the regional nomination, “because it was more in line with her values”.
After a complicated launch of their campsite in the midst of the Covid crisis, the couple now manage up to 20 people in the middle of summer. And do not regret anything even if the pill of the forced abandonment of post was a little hard to swallow.