A ten-day suspension without pay recommended after employee is found guilty of refusing to comply with her supervisor’s instruction
Human Resources Administration v Traylor, OATH Index #2162/11
OATH Administrative Law Judge Ingrid M. Addison found a clerical employee to be insubordinate when she refused her supervisor’s request to make corrections to ten cases records.
Traylor's defense: She had told the supervisor that despite her initials on the records, they were not her cases and "insisted that [her initials] must have been inserted by someone else."
Ultimately another employee had to make the corrections.
Judge Addison rejected the employee’s contention that the supervisor’s failure to use the word “order” or “command” when she asked Traylor to make the corrections.
The ALJ explaining that “Even if [Traylor] had not worked on the cases originally, she did not have a legitimate excuse for disobeying the directive," recommended that Traylor be suspended without pay for ten days.
