There is no employment law I'm aware of that requires a potential employer to hold open an offer of employment for a minimum amount of time.  Nor am I aware of any law that requires employers to accommodate an applicant who wants Offer A and requests that Offer B remain on hold for some period of time as a backup plan.  No employer wants to be your Plan B.

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In the U.S., unless the "internship" meets a very strict standard, payment of the minimum wage is required, and "experience" alone cannot be the only compensation.  To qualify in the U.S. as an intern, one important factor that must be present to avoid having to pay minimum wage, is that the intern cannot be providing any material benefit to the company.  In essence, the internship is designed to provide a benefit to the intern, and one of the hallmarks of a proper intern is that it is a net drain on the resources of the company providing the internship.  Accordingly, when contemplating offering an internship, unless you feel confident that you can meet the strict legal standard required in the U.S., the best practice is to pay the minimum wage required, especially if the company hopes to obtain some productive assistance from the intern.

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While there is a certain allure to "we have no policy," the absence of a policy can increase the risk of liability when some employees start to take off more time than a particular manager thinks is prudent. Consider the following scenario: A female of Chinese ancestry works at a hard-charging startup in a business unit that routinely has multiple tight deadlines. Her manager thinks 2 weeks of vacation is reasonable and prudent under the circumstances (since, after all, getting the team to meet deadlines is part of the manager's performance objectives). Another employee, male and caucasian, worksin a less busy unit (let's say finance) and has a manager that thinks it is fine to take off 4 weeks a year, as long as it is not at month-end. If both employees take three weeks of PTO, the manager of the female employee will likely apply a different standard for "reasonable vacation use" than the manager of the male employee, resulting in a substantially heightened risk of a claim of discrimination. Leave and disability accommodationissues are also implicated because it becomes difficult for the employer to objectively articulate limits on how long an employee can be out in the absence of a policy written prior to the request for leave/disability accommodation.

Typical policies accrue 10-30 days of total paid time off per year (depending on what amount the Company thinks is appropriate/reasonable), with a cap on accruals (since California and some other states prohibit "use it or lose it"). By providing a set annual accrual, the message to employees regarding how much PTO is appropriate to take per yearis clear and consistent. The employees still have the responsibility and the flexibility to schedule it (with the manager's approval) throughout the year.Furthermore, a written PTO policyalso provides managers a clear metric to determine when employee absences become "excessive" (negative PTO means excessive absence or poorly managed vacation).So, for all these reasons, I think a formal PTO policy is the way to go.

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The fact that your facebook status is not in English has no bearing on whether its content would constitute grounds for termination. Provided that you are an at-will employee (as is the default in virtually all, if not all, U.S. jurisdictions), unless your facebook status was an expression of some sort of protected activity (as in the case reported in the NY Times recently where the employee was posting criticisms of her supervisor among FB "friends" that were co-workers, constituting what the NLRB deemed a form of concerted, protected activity under the National Labor Relations Act), then you are subject to termination for any reason or no reason, with or without cause. There are always some exceptions, but the general answer is "yes."

Disclaimer: This post does not constitute legal advice and does not establish an attorney-client relationship.

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The law of sexual harassment essentially prohibits unwelcome sexual conduct, or adverse action directed at someone because of their sex, that is so "severe and pervasive" that it alters the terms and conditions of the individual's employment. Most company policies prohibit such conduct well before it rises to the "severe and pervasive" standard in order to create a "fire break" between policy violations and legal violations. If the Company is doing it right, their policy prohibiting harassment is drafted and enforced in such a way that no employee can ever reach the "severe and pervasive" legal standard before the Company steps in and addresses it as a policy violation.

Disclaimer: This post does not constitute legal advice and does not establish an attorney-client relationship.

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