Posting this to vent my frustration.
My dad has been working in IT at a small company (~20 employees) for 20 years.
He handed in his resignation for march 31st in mid january because his boss is a major psycopath.
My dad started as a normal employee and has been head of IT for the past 15 years.
For all that time period he has been on call 24/7 for the company on his own because his boss didn´t want to compensate any other employees for helping out with that.
He´s been working loads of overtime, about 500 hours per year.
That is only the time he was working in the office.
Every day after he came home he spent 2 or 3 hours working without being clocked in and often worked on the weekend and on holidays from home, also without being clocked in.
At the end of each year his boss erased his overtime because “as an epmloyee in a leading position overtime is included in his salary”.
My dad handed in his resignation with about 2 1/2 months notice.
Normally for employees in leading positions the amount of time that they have to notify their employer about their resignation is determined in their contract (this is in germany).
I would guess it should normally be a minimum amount of 3 months to find an adequate replacement and train them to do the job(3 months is probably still not enough time).
However, his boss never bothered to update his contract when he got promoted, so he could theoretically have quit with 6 weeks notice.
His boss is now mad that he quit “so suddenly”, which is basically his own fault for not updating the contract.
Since he handed in the resignation my dad was told to hand over all his tasks to his coworkers and write documentation for all his tasks, which he did.
his last day at work was supposed to have been febuary 15th because he has about 30 days of vacation left.
On his last day his boss handed him a document to sign in which he has to guarantee he has documented every task he performed during his time at the company and can guarantee that he leaves no technical problems that can cause damage to the company in the future.
I doubt anyone can remember every task they performed in 20 years and my dad is aware of a few technical issues that can produce huge problems in the future because his boss doesn´t approve spending money to fix them or doesn´t see them as problem.
So he didn´t sign it.
Because of that his boss didn´t approve his vacation and is having him come to work until he signs it.
He also has to report everything he did during the day, which is basically nothing because he finished all his tasks on his supposed last day.
Today he has already threatened him with a formal warning (Abmahnung) for not working.
After issueing two formal warnings for the same offense his employer can easily fire him without paying severance.
His employer would also not have to pay him for the coming month.
Basically his boss is trying to make his last weeks at work as miserable as possible.
My dad is already in contact with a lawyer but forcing his boss to allow him to take his vacation would only be possible via court and he wouldn´t even get an appointment in time.
If his boss´s unprofessional behaviour continues he will also try to get paid for the 1500 hours of official overtime from the past 3 years (maximum amount of time that you can claim compensation for your overtime retroactively).
My dad´s example has shown me to never put this much effort into your work because most employers will never appreciate it.
No amount of money will ever make up for the amount of time he put into his job and lost in his personal life.
He was always there for me when I needed him but his time was always scarce.
He did not quit earlier because he had a loan to pay of in a single income household and thought he would have a hard time finding a good job again at his age (turning 58 this year).