My adult son (late twenties) who has ASD but is high functioning in people orientated situations, has recently been offered a job by a leading petroleum company as a forecourt assistant in one of their garages. He has undertaken a number of roles since leaving university but they have tended to be temp roles and this was offered as a permanent full-time position.
Anyhoo, job was offered about 5 weeks ago by manager of the garage in a phone call. DS then had to pay for a new passport (nearly £100 old one ran out at the end of last year) to prove his nationality and identity, even though he provided his birth certificate, his previous passport, HMRC letters proving his address etc. He also had to pay £18.00 for a doctor’s letter confirming that he had not had a seizure for over 12 months.
He is however STILL waiting for the offer letter. Whilst DS has been waiting for that, the company also asked him to attend two training days, which he did AND also undertake their staff online training programme, which he has also completed (online training approx 16-hours).
The manager has only given DS his mobile number and a hotmail address as a means of contacting him, which seems at the least informal and at the worst totally unprofessional to not give DS a company email address for DS to contact the manager on.
DS has asked now several times for confirmation on the role title, hours, the rate of pay and T&Cs etc. Nothing has been forthcoming. At the interview the Manager said the job was full-time permanent, £15,000 per year, 8am-pm Monday to Friday.
Manager called today and said could DS start work tomorrow morning, we advised DS to say no and that he will be available to start on Monday (especially since he is actually staying at his Dad’s at the moment) but in the meantime pls could the manager email over the offer letter at least just to review it and then sign it in person next week.
Manager has said on the phone that offer letter will be provided when he starts work there and he cannot email it over as its twenty pages. (surely the offer letter would have originally been created on a computer so why can’t it be emailed)?
When pushed for more information the Manager now says that the salary will be £8,900 per year for 24 hours a week and that it will be a try out position at first. NOT the £15,000, full time role he was offered originally.
Frankly, as far as I am concerned it just sounds very unofficial, highly disorganised, unprofessional and possibly dishonest.
His father and I are tempted to advise DS to tell the company to shove it. WWYD.
(We obviously understand that garages tend to be franchises but even so we have checked with this particular company and all franchise owners are expected to act in a uniformed way for all the company’s policies and procedures).
Any advice would be hugely appreciated, especially from any HR experts out there.
Thanks v much!