WWhen a supervisor accused Jennifer (not her real name) of being late in recording billable hours for clients, it set off a series of events that turned bad for her, a 20-year-old engineer in a new job in Colorado, and her employer, engineer Terracon Consultants Inc.
The company fired Jennifer in 2022 for allegedly falsifying her time cards, and that year filed a lawsuit in Fort Collins, Colo., in federal court accusing her of firing her in violation of laws protecting people with disabilities.
The case dragged on until a year ago, when a judge dismissed Jennifer’s claims. He no longer works for Terracon. The account of what happened touches on issues that researchers have identified as traits of Gen Z employees, how unhappy many are with their jobs and the mental health issues involved.
Based on a series of happiness and satisfaction surveys, researchers David Blanchflower and Alex Bryson pointed to the “rising despair of young workers” in a working paper published last summer by the National Bureau of Economic Research, described as a private, non-profit, non-partisan group of academic economists. They cited previous research showing that while previous generations had experienced midlife crises, these had largely disappeared and been replaced by a “declining youth mental health”.
The decline, Blanchflower and Bryson wrote, “is particularly evident for 12- to 25-year-olds, and especially for young women.” Stress, anxiety and depression were the prominent experiences reported by many young women in relation to their work.
Other studies have pointed to similar trends among engineers of all kinds. Equal Engineers, a UK association dedicated to inclusion and diversity, published a study in 2019 based on a survey of 875 engineers. More than a third of engineers described their mental health as fair or poor, and more than a fifth have had to take time off work because of it, the survey found.
Before dismissing Jennifer’s lawsuits against Terracon last year, Judge William J. Martinez summarized what had happened.
A graduate of Colorado State University with a degree in engineering, Jennifer had held an entry-level job at Olathe, Kan.-based Terracon as an environmental field engineer. The firm ranks 19th on the ENR Top 500 Design Firms list, with revenues of about $1.3 billion by 2024.
Some of Jennifer’s duties included taking soil and water samples in the field and preparing reports.
The company expected employees to fill out separate time sheets for two types of work hours: billable or non-billable to customers, and had an ethics policy that required honesty in entries. According to Martinez, Terracon maintained “carrying capacity goals” for employees that, in Jennifer’s case, were set at 80 percent. Martinez wrote that every week her supervisor would discuss any unbillable time or failure to meet company goals.
In September 2021, Martinez wrote, Jennifer and her supervisor discussed why one of her field sample reports was taking a long time but wasn’t finished. She admitted that she hadn’t done as much as she had hoped with the work, and during the meeting she was left shaken and in tears. Her supervisor asked if non-work related issues were affecting her, and Jennifer talked about losing focus and feeling tired.
At this point, Jennifer’s supervisor alleges, she had committed time sheet fraud, a crime that warranted termination.
But Jennifer continued to work for Terracon on reduced hours, Martinez wrote. She also began working with the state’s Division of Vocational Rehabilitation and saw a doctor who diagnosed her with “ADHD/Depression/PTSD,” which made it difficult to concentrate at work, and also had “Bipolar Disorder, Unspecified.” The day after her diagnoses, she reported her situation to the company’s human resources department, noting that she was working with a new therapist, Martinez wrote.
But while this was going on, Jennifer’s supervisor claimed that she had recorded as general administrative time, that is, time worked for the benefit of the company, 10.5 hours spent on rehabilitation or counseling.
The challenged time sheet
In an email exchange, Jennifer’s supervisor challenged her to explain the 10.5 hours. According to Judge Martinez, Jennifer responded by email that she had informed Terracon that she was working with the Vocational Rehabilitation Division. Her efforts involved trying to “find ways to manage the ways in which my disability can make my work performance and consistency difficult to maintain,” especially given that she was the only field employee in her office at the time.
Then the dispute between Jennifer and her supervisor worsened. The supervisor found the hours Jennifer recorded as general administrative time to be a dishonest entry in violation of the company’s ethics policy. Jennifer contended that the time worked with the vocational division was properly classified as general administrative time.
In any case, Terracon fired her, and Jennifer sued the company for firing her on disability, in violation of federal law.
Last November, Martinez ruled that Jennifer had not provided sufficient evidence of her claim and granted summary judgment in Terracon’s favor, effectively ending the lawsuit.
According to public records, Jennifer now works for a government public works agency.
