Help Wanted: Boss always on your tail

I asked an employment lawyer to weigh in on this unusual situation. Whether the boss' actions are illegal depends on her intent, said Michael J. Borrelli of Borrelli & Associates in Great Neck.

"If the boss is following the writer around and is doing so because the boss is motivated by a discriminatory bias, stalking an employee would certainly constitute an illegal hostile work environment," he said.

Illegal workplace discrimination includes disparate treatment driven by such things as race, religion, gender and national origin.

Employers have a right to ensure that their employees are following company policy, Borrelli said, but the companies have to tread carefully. "They have every right to monitor their employees if they suspect some sort of wrongdoing, so long as they are doing so absent a discriminatory motive," he said.

If things deteriorate and you feel extremely uncomfortable, he suggests you consider lodging a complaint with human resources or going to the police.

"First and foremost, if employees think that their safety is endangered, they should take affirmative steps to preserve that safety," Borrelli said.

If you are a nonexempt employee, which generally means hourly, your employer has to pay you only for the hours you work. Paying hourly employees when they don't work is not only generous but perfectly legal, because companies can always give employees more than the law requires. And they can legally exclude hourly workers on vacation, said employment attorney Craig Roberts, a partner at Jackson Lewis in Melville.

"Nothing under applicable law would prohibit an employer from only paying those employees actually scheduled to work under the circumstances presented," said Roberts said.

Even if you are an exempt employee, that is, salaried, the company could have required you to use your paid-time off to cover your extended vacation, a topic this column has dealt with several times in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy. When businesses close because of bad weather they still have to pay the exempt employees but can require them to cover that time off with vacation days. Exempt employees fall into the executive, administrative, professional and outside-sales categories.

The bottom line: You are a victim of bad timing, not of any illegalities by your employer. For more on what constitutes illegal workplace discrimination , go to http://1.usa.gov/X5n0OJ, For more on state laws and employers' vacation policies go to http://bit.ly/OhVNDt.