by Chris – Unemployment-Tips.com
I was fired. At the time, they said misconduct was for misuse of my cell phone.
I was also told that many family members complained I was always on my cell phone. I worked for a nursing home.
I was the front desk/security/receptionist and I handled all incoming calls. I was also responsible for paging all employee’s in the building.
Even though almost every phone in the building could page, the other employers did not want to page, so they did not. The phone system is old and if I was on a phone with outside calls, the workers inside that would try to reach me, would get the busy signal.
If I was making a page, my line would also be busy. To add insult to injury, I was always being accused of making personal calls, which I never was, but then could not prove it, because the phone was always ringing.
I had to call the elevator company when the elevator was broken or out of service which was everyday.
I made all announcements for the building and by the way, there were many departments, such as recreation, housekeeping, Maintenance, dietary, nursing, c.n.a, doctors, salon, admission, the billing office and the corporate people.
But just one of me!
I just couldn’t make everyone happy, so to prevent being accused of making personal phone calls on the company’s phone I made some phone calls on my cell.
(Now before I get into the fact, that I worked at the desk for one year, it should be know that during the year I had 4 different bosses the fourth one fired me.)
I was written up by my 3rd boss for using my cell phone. After that I never used it again. It was many months later that I was fired for using my cell phone.
I was told that the residents family members complained about me constantly using my cell. I was not informed of this before and I never saw the family members statements. However, unemployment denied me for misconduct and several other reason.
Also, like I already stated I had four bosses within a year from my first boss the one that hired me. He and I had an verbal agreement that I could come in to work anytime between 8am-9am. Because I was in school.
At the time I was hired they couldn’t keep a receptionist they would always quit. I worked that way for three months. Then I got a new boss I continued to work as I did before but my new boss was not aware of my schedule, so he wrote me up after I explained everything, he eventually allowed me to come to work at 9am, but only after I had already received two write ups by him for being late.
I had to write him up several times before he agreed to here me out. I even tried to get him to throw the old write ups away. He was fired before he got the chance to change things.
I believe my lateness to work is one of the other reasons for being denied.
And last but not least, I was given an additional job duty the admission department refused to continue doing. At first I refused, but was written up for insubordination, but I believed that it was unfair to give me more work to make wrist bands and doors tags for the residents.
There are 174 resident that live there. I needed 348 tags. I manually typed all 348 tags using a p_touch. I also had to for example, tell the residents status such as if they were diabetic I had to use red ink, or draw a heart if they were d.n.r and if they were on fluids put a black dot, plus cut them out to fit the band rite. After all that hard work, I still had to answer the phones, make pages and play security and then the nursing department would say they never received them.
Of course I was mad when they asked me to do it again, so I said no and was written up again. Eventually, I did do it again, but this time, I made the nurse that I gave them to, sign for it, as my boss.
That was my proof. I wrote a statement that I no longer wanted to make the tags because it was interfering with my regular job duties. I never received a response.
Answer to Getting Fired for Misusing a Cell Phone While Working
Hi,
I’m not sure what I have to say will be seen by you as helpful to you, but I’ll say it anyway, in case it’s helpful for someone not aware of the different way employees can confirm misconduct
If this is the gist of how you plan to rebut you were fired for something other than work related misconduct at any appeal hearing, sounds like a hot mess, you’d reasonably at fault for .. for getting yourself into.
Do you really not understand why at least some of your actions as a subordinate employee, which you described, would be held as being way out of line by your employer? And not just one act, but the hints you dropped there were repeated violations of reasonable employer rules, over the course of one twelve month period that in fact you were written up for.
You can file an appeal, however, go to the hearing rebut with your own reasoning as to why your discharge should rise to at least one of three level of work misconduct, one can be found guilty of in New Jersey.
I won’t tell you emphatically, you can’t win an appeal hearing, but mostly because at least three bosses are no longer employed at the nursing home, therefore, no longer available to the employer to participate as direct witnesses to specific incidents they had first hand knowledge of to write you up.
But if I were you, I also wouldn’t be surprised by a ruling your misconduct was also a pattern of behavior, exhibited even here as not only a propensity to feel justified to be insubordinate, but when refusing to comply with what seems to be quite reasonable directives from those who had the authority to tell you what to do at work, as being severe misconduct.