My Dad Was Let Go After Almost 20 Years And They Didn’t Give Him A Reason. Is It Worth Meeting With A Lawyer?

Location: Utah

So my dad has worked at this company for close to 20 years (it would’ve been 20 years in April) and they let him go today. He worked as part of a production line team and he was made the supervisor over that department 17 years ago.

The situation really started a few weeks ago when he was talking to another department about how his room was pretty full and asked them to hold their supplies in their room until he could get his room worked through. He has done this multiple times over the last 17 years and it was never an issue. The manager of the branch, who we’ll call Sarah, that he works at overheard him and did not like the request. (My dad and Sarah have been clashing more and more as the years have gone on but nothing horrible)

He then received a write up for this conversation. It wasn’t about the tone or his attitude but more about the request. He was very upset about the write up and when they tried to finish the meeting about it, he told them that he was going home for the rest of the day and took a half day. He talked to Sarah’s boss who told him that because it was a “he said she said” situation that he would still receive the write up.

My dad thought it over for the weekend and decided he would step down from the supervisor position because he didn’t want to deal with the stress and pressure of the position and instead he wanted to be a regular production line employee. The Sarah’s boss tried to talk him out of it since he had been there so long and they were worried about a power struggle between him and the new supervisor. But my dad was set on stepping down so the paper work had gone through last week. He had a lot of personal items set up for the supervisor since he had been there so long including a large desk, radio/speakers set up around the room, an extra work table, and some other stuff. When the change was official my dad brought all of his stuff home and left his work with the bare bones that had been there when he was promoted 17 years ago.

He worked about another week to a week and half after the change happened. Today they announced the new supervisor for the department he works in and they pulled him aside just before lunch and let him go.

He asked for a reason and was told that he would have more questions if they answered that and that they would meet again at a later date to talk about everything because they wanted him to get all of his questions together.

Is it worth talking to a lawyer about? They haven’t been treating him very well through this whole situation but I’m not sure if they’ve done anything against the law. I think it’s very weird that they wouldn’t give him a reason while they were firing him