by Sheryl
(Kansas city)
After a year and half with this company I was fired for “failure to collect the proper amount of money from a customer”. False . I was fired for having a drawer shortage that could have resulted from many actions as I work for a Corp. that provides the following services: pawn loans, payday loans, sells store merchandise, purchases items to become our merchandise , cash checks & issue money orders. I have good performance reviews overall but human error in some form is the cause for mistakes most of our store employees make and drawer shortages as a result are not uncommon. However I had 2 days back to back with my shortage not being accounted for & was fired when I reported to work my next shift. Company policy does address 3 write ups for the same thing in a years time could result in termination. Key points: no documentation for write up was presented or signed for those 2 dAys and the 3rd incident was a couple months prior when our money order machine said an extra money order was printed but my drawer wasn’t off & our store didn’t have evidence to support that only the corporate office that receives that particular report submitted an error report & my immediate supervisor told me that machine has made past mistakes but there wasn’t anyway to refute corporate in this situation. It wasn’t a big deal just A bs situation that my boss HAD to write me up for @ I signed it .
Any advice would be appreciated& thank u
Hi Sheryl,
Yes, human error can amount to what is considered misconduct. It generally falls under the word “negligence” in a misconduct definition .. if you had been accused of stealing .. that would fall under words like intentional, willful, knowing and my favorite .. wanton.
You have the policy and the progressive discipline policy to use.
Other things that might help if you are denied and go to hearing is to get that supervisor to admit under oath that the machines make errors and there is no way to prove it.
Also, were you the only one who used that drawer those two days?
You would want to focus on showing that the employer did not warn and terminate you per their own procedure.
If someone else had access to the drawer subpoena witnesses if necessary to prove this.
Or if you were the only one .. raise the bit “machine errors” and no way to account.
And keep this front and center .. it was at worst, an inadvertent error .. and intentional harm was not caused to the employer because of anything else I already mentioned that was out of your control to maintain.
By the way, KC, MO or KC, KS?
Both attorney states, but I’d get a better feeling for your chances if it were KS because they are a stickler for documentation from both employers and employees.