Can I quit a part-time job while collecting unemployment?

My old job AND the state (Mass.) are causing me problems with collecting unemployment...what are my options?

• i'll try to keep this as short as possible, but i'm sure i'll fail... PLEEEASE help anyway! i worked at a job for 6 years. it was a two-level place -- a college bar upstairs and a family restaurant/older-crowd bar downstairs. i started as a bouncer and was promoted to manager of the upstairs within two years. i was also capable of handling downstairs as well, and sometimes both at once by myself. it was very haphazardly run, and i often considered leaving for a more structured environment b/c of the accompanying BS. nevertheless, i was a loyal, dedicated, and generally very good employee from my first day to my last, and i was extemely well liked by co-workers and customers alike. a lot of people are VERY upset that i was let go. so here's how it all ended: last year, the owner decided to move the business out of the town center and into a new location that used to be a supermarket...a huge, open building on one floor. long story short, we moved and the owner clearly shifted his focus towards being more of the family restaurant, although the bar is very important, as it is a brewery and they depend on selling their own beer primarily. however, it's more of a happy hour/dinnertime type thing, and the college crowd has all but disappeared...basically, we mashed the old place together, not really knowing for sure whether it would end up like the old upstairs or the old downstairs, or a combination. the downstairs won. so now they start attacking the high labor costs they were seeing since the move, in desperate and urgent fashion. service was suffering due to the large size of the place, so they had to beef up staffing. finally something had to give. one manager (who was always kind of on the chopping block anyway for being a general f*ck-up) was laid off. a few days later, i get called in early to meet with the owner and GM. they tell me that they are very appreciative of my loyalty and dedication to the job all these years, but they had to cut back on management to allow for more staff (which i know to be true). Security (which was my department) was also getting hacked to the bare bones, and would go from a 7-days a week thing to only fridays and saturdays. with that, they said i could maybe stay on as a bouncer on the weekend, although they "understood that it wasn't enough to butter [my] bread." I asked how much the hourly rate would be, and they nervously looked at each other, and they obviously hadn't discussed it, and i just chose to just chuckle about it to break the tension, but it was kind of implied that they'd have to get back to me about it. i said i'd have to think about, because i liked it there, but i'd have to do what was best for me, and it was left at that. but overall, they seemed to be regretful about it, and i asked if it was a performance issue, and they said no, it was a money thing. i had two shifts left that week, and i worked them at my normal $15/hr rate. i was scheduled for two DOORMAN shifts the next weekend, but upon the advice of the Unemployment Dept (which i'll explain next), i had them covered and never worked them. i just considered it as a layoff in my estimation, since no formal offer was really made about the door position, it was more of an off-the-record, "jeez, you're a good guy, we'd love to help you out SOMEHOW" kind of thing. there was never anything in writing or anything. so here's where the state comes in: it occurred to me that i would need to file for unemployment while i found a new job. it also occurred to me that accepting a lower-paying job with less hours with the same company could interfere. basically, i need the money to be based on my OLD wages. i called the Mass DUA to find out how it works. i explained the situation to the rep and i was told that i DON'T have to accept a lower paying position and would then qualify. so i had my basic answer. i went further and asked (since you're allowed to earn up to 1/3 of your weekly benefit while collecting) if i could accept the bouncer job for the weekends, since i like working there, or if that would be a weird gray area and i'd have to find part-time work elsewhere. she said she wasn't quite sure about that, and we came to the conclusion that it was iffy and the safe thing to do was to just not do it and leave. so i did that, and then filed a week or so later. i got one check within a few days. then when i claimed the next week, i was prompted to call their office. i was told that the job said that i "quit", and so i don't get benefits. i immediately called the owner and asked why, and said "i've been nothing but good to you, this is messed up." he was just like "yeah. we offered you the door job, and you turned it down and quit." i wanted to flip out, but he hadn't given me my reference letter yet, so i cooled off, and just made sure that i got my letter. i i called unemployment back, and said i was very upset, b/c i had been told by them that i should leave the job and that i would be eligible to collect. I said i would have kept the job so i'd have SOME income. she had told me that i didn't have to accept going from 40hrs/wk @ $15/hr to 10hrs/wk @ an unspecified-but-lower rate, probably $11-12/hr. this new woman i talked to immediately, in a concerned voice, says "ok, our representatives are NOT career counselors and are not allowed to give advice", etc, and basically files a report that i'll be contacted about in 3-6 weeks. but she also said "the burden of proof is on me", so i'm sure i'll just get screwed by the bureaucracy for not routinely taping my phone calls. all i have is my phone record of calling, and hoping that they really do "monitor for quality assurance." so are there any legal avenues that i have here? either vs the state for wrongly instructing me to leave my job, or vs ...my old job for claiming i quit just b/c they "sort-of" offered me another job (even though i was told "if you're CEO one day, and they demote you to janitor the next, you don't have to take it, and you'd qualify for unemployment)? i'm not looking for a handout here, i just want what i'm entitled to! i'm very fortunate to have come into $10,000 recently, so i'm ok for the short term, but i need that to be SAVINGS. any knowledgeable advice is appreciated! @A Hunch: are you sure this applies to massachusetts specifically? my friend's wife is a lawyer and he has been laid off a couple times, so he's very familiar with the rules and regs. i haven't spoken to his wife at length, but both seem to think from this same info that i "did everything right" and should be fine, especially since nothing is in writing pertaining to the job offer. i just asked on here because i was thinking about it and got antsy, haha. i haven't asked for my job back, since it's been filled, and anyway, i don't think that would make me eligible to collect anyway, so it's kind of pointless. but i am 100% certain of what i was told by the DUA rep, i made sure there was no mistaking what she was telling me. i challenged it from every angle, and she rebuffed all of it.

• Answer:

  the state never gives advice over the phone, they will only explain the law they will not comment on the merits of any particular case until the person files a claim.... they can not and will not discuss a particular case prior to filing due to all the information that is required for a decision to be made.... so, either you misunderstood what was said or someone made a huge mistake, and i am inclined to think you misunderstood... the unemployment office would never tell you to quit working, the fact is you can work and draw unemployment so that whole premise just seems like you misunderstanding.... you made a lot of assumptions that were just inaccurate, benefits are based on the "base year" the last quarter (3 months) are not even used for determining your benefits so your reasoning that you needed to quit instead of taking a lower wage was just wrong. with that in mind again i go back to you hearing what you wanted instead of what was said, because the state employees know that the last quarter is not used and would have explained that if you had asked and were really listening..... i seriously doubt the state did anything wrong, i truly believe you simply did not listen (assuming you actually called and asked prior to making your decisions). if the state employee actually gave you wrong information that is all it is, a mistake, you have no legal recourse due to a mistake (if there was an actual mistake made) as far as your contention the employer did something wrong; you did quit, you failed to work the job that was offered.... you made that choice, the employer simply conveyed that information to the state when the time came.....