Plaintiff Willard S. Rose appeals from a summary judgment in favor of defendant.
Plaintiff was hired by defendant Allied Development Company in August of 1981 as assistant manager of the shoe department of its Murray stpre, pursuant to an oral employment agreement for an indefinite term. Several months later, in January of 1982, plaintiff’s job requirements were increased, and he became responsible for the shoe departments in other stores as well. Sometime between March and June of 1982, Allied promoted him to the position of manager of the shoe department, and he *84 was required to coordinate the sales promotions of the Murray, Sandy, and Tooele stores.
In July of 1982, plaintiff talked to John Wetsel, his supervisor, about the possibility of attending school while continuing to work. Wetsel told him that as far as he was concerned, he would have no problem with that arrangement “so long as his school obligations did not interfere with his job duties.” Wetsel specifically stressed the importance of plaintiff’s maintaining his average of forty-five hours per week and insuring that the sales floor was supervised at all times.
Until sometime in August, nothing more was said regarding the likelihood of plaintiff’s attending school while continuing to work full-time. At that time, plaintiff and Rayne Johnstun, the assistant manager of the shoe department, who was also attending school, met with Wetsel to review the tentative class schedules each had planned. The schedules were arranged to allow both plaintiff and Johnstun to work an average of forty-five hours per week and to provide supervisory coverage of the sales floor by one of them at all times. Wetsel told them that the schedules “looked fine” and repeated the required conditions he had mentioned to plaintiff at their earlier meeting.
Plaintiff subsequently registered for full-time attendance at Westminster College and incurred expenses of $1,645 for tuition and $97.81 for books.
On October 16, 1982, after having received complaints about plaintiff’s performance, specifically the inflexibility of his schedule and his unavailability at peak sales times, Wetsel told him that the schedule was not working out as well as he thought it would. He told plaintiff that he could quit school or. quit his job. He also offered him a third option, i.e., that he switch from a salaried position to an hourly position, resulting in a monthly decrease in compensation of approximately $500. However, Wetsel also expressed his discomfort with the possibility of paying plaintiff substantially less for doing essentially the same work. Allied subsequently terminated him, and he brought this action alleging breach of contract, promissory estop-pel, contractual wrongful discharge, tor-tious wrongful discharge, and breach of the implied covenant of good faith and fair dealing.
Allied moved for summary judgment, relying on its continuing right to terminate an employee at will and for any reason under a contract of indefinite duration. The lower court determined that plaintiff’s employment with Allied was in fact pursuant to an at-will agreement and granted Allied’s motion.
I
Summary judgment must be supported by evidence, admissions, and inferences which when viewed in the light most favorable to the losing side establish that “there is no genuine issue as to any material fact and that the moving party is entitled to a judgment as a matter of law.” Utah R.Civ.P. 56(c);
Norton v. Blackham,
Utah,
II
Inasmuch as a determination of the precise nature of plaintiff’s employment contract with Allied is the pivotal point on which his other contentions are premised, we shall address this issue first. Plaintiff contends that the lower court erred in its determination that his employment contract was terminable at will. While he concedes that most employment contracts for an indefinite duration are terminable at will, he asserts that his contract falls into one or more of the exceptions to that general rule.
Traditionally, employment at will contracts provided that an employer could terminate an employee for “no cause, good cause, or even cause morally wrong with
*85
out fear of liability.”
1
Thompson v. St. Regis Paper Co.,
Coincidentally, this Court has also recognized exceptions to that general at-will doctrine. For example, in
Bihlmaier v. Carson,
Utah,
[I]n the absence of some further express or implied stipulation as to the duration of the employment or of a good consideration in addition to the services contracted to be rendered, the contract is no more than an indefinite general hiring which is terminable at the will of either party.
Id. at 792 (footnote omitted; emphasis added).
In order to decide the nature of this employment contract, we must look at the totality of the circumstances and the intent of both parties. It is undisputed that Allied hired plaintiff for an indefinite period. Further, both parties agree that there was no written formalized agreement. In his deposition, plaintiff responded to the following questions asked by Allied’s counsel:
Q. Did you sign any written agreement, employment agreement, contract?
A. No.
Q. Was this oral agreement of employment for any particular duration of time? A. No.
Q. So you didn’t know how long you would be working there?
A. No.
Yet plaintiff contends that this informal at-will employment contract metamorphosed into a contract for a definite term, a contract which could only be terminated for cause. He supports this contention with two brief conversations he had with John Wetsel, claiming that these short exchanges led him to believe that he would not be terminated while he attended school. His understanding from the following conversations was that his job would continue while he attended school so long as he continued to perform his job satisfactorily. As to the initial meeting with Wetsel, plaintiff testified as follows:
Q. Can you tell me what you said to Mr. Wetsel?
A. I just kind of told him that I really had desires to go back — that I would like to go back to school and I thought I could still do it and still perform my job. And he said, well, he said, really, at first glance, as long as you maintain your 45 hours a week and as long as you see that the selling floor is supervised, he said, I’ve got no problem with it. But he said, when you have got more facts, come back and we’ll talk about it. It was a very short meeting. It wasn’t a long meeting.
Q. How long would you say it was? A. Five minutes. It was just touching base. I didn’t know what I was going to do, I had nothing concrete, it was just an idea in my mind at that time.
As to the second meeting with Wetsel, Rose testified:
We went over the schedules, and we were able to show him that we — that we could attend — this class scheduling we had come up with would allow us to both of us work our 45 hours a week, and it would also give supervisory level — I mean it would give supervisory coverage to the floor at all times.
And he looked at it and we discussed it back and forth, and he said that it looked fine to him, that as long as we maintained our 45 hours a week and as long as we maintained supervision over the
*86 selling floor, that he saw no problem with it.
Q. He saw no problem with what, with the schedules?
A. With us going back to school, going ahead and starting school. And he even wished us well.
Q. Did he say anything else?
A. No. That was really the purpose of the meeting. So there really wasn’t other matters that I recall being discussed.
Sid plaintiff successfully remove his employment contract out of the at-will category via one of the exceptions we recognized in
Bihlmaier?
We think not. Looking first at whether he had an implied employment agreement that was not terminable at Allied’s will, we observe that the existence of an employment agreement not terminable at will must be established by more than subjective understandings or expectations.
Goodpaster v. Pfizer, Inc.,
Ill
Was there consideration sufficient to prevent Allied’s termination of plaintiff’s employment at will? This, of course, must be consideration
in addition
to the services already required and must result in a detriment to the employee and a benefit to the employer.
See
Neither the statements made by Wetsel nor plaintiff’s subjective understanding of those statements is adequate justification to find an implied contract or consideration sufficient to fall within the exceptions recognized by this Court. Since plaintiff’s employment contract was terminable at will by Allied and inasmuch as Allied never relinquished its right to fire plaintiff without cause, his performance, *87 whether good or bad, is not at issue in this action. Plaintiff had merely an employment contract of indefinite duration that could be terminated at will by either Allied or plaintiff without cause.
IV
Plaintiff contends that even if this Court finds that there was not a contract that was terminable only for cause, the doctrine of promissory estoppel should be invoked to allow him to recover for his termination from Allied. He asserts that in reliance on Wetsel’s promise to him, he enrolled in school and suffered a detriment thereby. Promissory estoppel is defined in Restatement (Second) of Contracts § 90 (1981) as requiring:
A promise which the promisor should reasonably expect to induce action or for-ebearance on the part of the promisee and which does induce such action or forebearance is binding if injustice can be avoided only by enforcement of the promise.
To allow plaintiff to recover under the doctrine of promissory estoppel would require more than his subjective understanding that the two brief conversations with Wet- ' sel became a binding promise not to terminate him. It would further require finding that he was justified in assuming, once again from these two conversations, that Allied had promised not to terminate him at will. On this basis, we cannot conclude that he is entitled to recover. For comparison, consider our decision in
Bullock v. Deseret Dodge Truck Center, Inc.,
In view of our determination that plaintiffs contract with Allied remained terminable at will, it is not necessary to address the merits of his other contentions on appeal.
Affirmed. No costs awarded.
Notes
. This formulation, known as the "American Rule,” was drawn from H. Wood, Master and Servant 134 (2d ed. 1886).