Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, September 24, 1994 TAG: 9409270027
SECTION: BUSINESS PAGE: A6 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: SANDRA BROWN KELLY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
But Thursday, when she returned to begin training for a job at the company's RPS Teleservice Center on Thirlane Road in Northwest Roanoke, she was fired.
By Friday, RPS tried to help her find a job someplace else.
Williams, 22, had the wrong family tree.
Her mother, Brenda Davis, works for RPS, and it's against company rules to hire immediate family members, said Charlsie Pafford, human resources manager.
The problem is that the interviewer who hired Williams didn't notice that on an application she answered "yes" to a question of whether she had relatives working at RPS.
The interviewer liked her skills, including previous work at the Sears Telecatalog Center, which previously occupied the same building. She was hired to work 21 hours a week at $5.40 an hour. He then scheduled her training.
Between Monday and Thursday, the "yes" answer was noticed, and when Williams returned, the RPS supervisor learned the relative was Williams' mother.
"She said I was terminated, but they would pay me for the day," Williams said.
Williams said she was shocked.
"I can't go back to my old job," she said.
She quit that job Monday after RPS hired her.
"My mother said she'd give up her 12 hours a week at RPS so I could work there, but I don't want her to do that," Williams said.
Williams, who is estranged from her husband and has three children ages 6, 4 and 1, spent the past year in the Roanoke Valley Youth Conservation Corps. The corps is a job training program for young people who have dropped out of school and need to upgrade their job skills and education.
Williams completed work for her general equivalency diploma while in the program. She also got paid for the 25 hours a week she spent in on-the-job training at several employers, including the Roanoke Sewage Treatment Plant.
She could have stayed in the corps until Sept. 28 and continued to be paid. Because she had to get a job by month's end anyway, Williams said, she decided to skip the last couple of weeks of the program, which were devoted to how to get hired and go on to work.
"I know how to get a job," she said.
She proved that. And Friday, she went on another interview.
Pafford contacted Tweeds Inc. telecatalog center and told them she was directing Williams to them.
"We would have hired her if she hadn't had an immediate relative who worked here," Pafford said.
She also said the company might review its rules about hiring relatives, but she said she thinks it's a good rule.
The irony of the event is that RPS is trying to hire 200 workers.
"I need about 200 afternoon people," Pafford said.
Williams knows where she can get one of them.
by CNB