The title should be Can I collect unemployment if I have been fired for forwarding an email.

(CA)

I forwarded an email to one friend outside of work and was reprimanded for it almost a month later. The others involved were reprimanded almost two weeks before I was and placed on administrative leave for a week and then dismissed. (I don’t know if that makes a difference). After being questioned initially (it was on a Friday), I was told the following Tuesday that it was being proposed that I be dismissed the next week on Friday at 5:00 p.m. Therefore, I still had to work and then consequently dismissed Friday at 5.

The email was, in the employer’s view, “offensive”. The email depicted a nude woman with her backside to the screen and at the top of the screen was, “Quit messing around and get back to work”.
Reasons stated by the employer that supported dismissal for this act alone was:
Inattention do duty, carelessness, damage to, negligence in the care of handling court property, interfering with the work performance of others, discourteous treatment of public and employees, harasment, sexual harassment, misuse of court funds/property for personal gain or other unauthorized purposes.

Hi,

Well, they certainly covered all bases .. eh?

And since you weren’t responsible for the origination of the email .. I’d think some of those policies you supposedly violated .. if not all are irrelevant.

What I think would be relevant is the policy that states it is a rule violation to forward emails outside of work and use the employer’s email for non work related stuff that also says you can be terminated for a one-time occurrence.

I’m also having a problem with the lapse in times between the infraction and the reaction (to you) and particularly the timeframe between the decision to fire you and the date you were fired.

So I’m just going to briefly describe why the state might have a problem with this .. or any reasonable person for that matter including me.

If an employer decides you are guilty of misconduct and they allow too much time to pass between the time they became aware of your misconduct and the time they discharge you .. it raises a question of whether if what you did was so bad as to warrant firing you because you caused harm to their interests .. why would they not swiftly deal with you so as to avoid any more harm?

You know and I know, that if every employer had a policy addressing this and it was uniformly enforced .. there would only be a handful of people left working in America .. relatively speaking.

I hope this helps a little .

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