TexasCHLforum.com

sjfcontrol wrote: This won't help much either, but...
In a contract dispute, where the wording of the contract is ambiguous, a court will side against the party that authored the ambiguous statement -- at least as I understand it.

As a general rule you understand exactly right, sjf. If when the OP chooses to fish or cut bait he wants his ultimate question to be decided by a judge, after all that has been spread around on this thread, that is his decision. That is what I meant by "accepting the consequences," or, put another way, he must be prepared to live with it, and accept it gracefully if he draws the short straw.

But, once again, he must not forget that his Texas employer can fire him for no reason at all, with certain limitations not in issue here. If the employer keeps his mouth shut, as some have advised the OP to do, lots of luck getting his case into a courtroom after he is let go. It has been done, but not very often. Nor would it be likely that a judge would approach this question in advance as a hypothetical matter, although there is arguably a judicial way to attempt that, particularly since any ambiguity can be cured by the employer by a stroke of the pen.

I may be wrong, but I suspect the OP doesn't want a lawsuit; he most likely just wants to keep his job.

Elmo

C-dub wrote:I don't know. Adding that little part at the end makes the sentence nonsensical.

I must agree with C-dub. I don't know either. Even after all this helpful (?) discussion I suspect the OP still doesn't know. "That little part at the end" at least, in my opinion, makes the sentence ambiguous, demonstrated clearly by the differing readings we have had here.

When one interprets an ambiguous policy as meaning what he wants it to mean, while knowing it is ambiguous and may mean just the opposite, he is sticking his neck out. It can even be argued that the person thereupon has an obligation to find out what it means from the person responsible for the policy. The general consensus on this question appears to be what it usually is when this question comes up on this forum: "Ignore it. Concealed is concealed, regardless of what it means."

It must be realized that those who give this advice do not have a dog in the hunt, and they have no stake in the correctness of the advice. If an issue like this comes to the crunch, good luck telling your boss, "But the CHL forum said...."

Fine, if that is your decision, but you must be prepared to accept the consequences, whatever they are, should they eventuate. Yours truly would be irresponsible to attempt an answer to the question asked by the OP, because, like C-dub, "I don't know."

And I cannot help but repeat this, as I have said over and over. Anything one puts in an email, or, particularly, puts on a public forum, should be considered seen by all the world. This very discussion, should it go public, demonstrates to all concerned that the OP should know that the statement is ambiguous, and that he has admitted publicly that he does not know what the policy really is. As I put it above, he must be prepared to accept the possible consequences of his personal decision.

Elmo