I have a lot of expertise in my field of luxury retail, and I moved 1000 miles for a job that I expected to retire from, making great money in a role I loved and was great at.
We had a huge (six figure) internal theft. You can see – fuzzily – a security guard doing the actual thieving, with two other people acting as lookouts. Despite my company being a big one you would recognize, the cameras are shoddy and misdirected, which means you can see what happened, but it's not enough for prosecution.
I did the inventory count that discovered the theft, which was outside my normal scope, because we were wildly short staffed that day and the one employee we have who would have been able to do it is notoriously slow moving and wouldn't have gotten it done in time. I didn't follow a particular policy about delegation of authority, which was wrong. However this was also the first time I'd ever done it, and I was trying to support the team. The system also blows and so when I noticed the item missing, the team told me it had shipped out, and I assumed that the same thing that happened constantly – items being slow to pull out of inventory – was happening again.
I got fired for doing the procedure wrong. Of the people who actually STOLE SOMETHING THE PRICE OF A HOUSE, one left the job, one was fired for stealing office supplies, and one was fired for job performance. Obviously they were getting people for what they could, since no one has gone to jail.
I was a recognized leader in my region and received message after message from everyone – subordinates, peers, upper management – all extremely upset that I'd been let go. I uprooted my life for this job. Everyone acknowledges that this is deeply unfair but nothing has been done to fix it. The company even contested my unemployment so I have had to blow through the 401k I was just starting to build.
The funniest thing is that I could have just left the count alone, letting it go outside the window it's supposed to be done in, and I'd still have my job.
I already didn't trust corporations but now I just have lost my will to do much of anything. I got a new job in my field and it's a nice culture but its not the level I loved. I acknowledge that I screwed up but it should have been a simple write up, not a scapegoating because their security cameras couldn't nail these theives to a charge.
I feel like I'll mourn this opportunity forever and it's sucked all the energy I pride myself on right out of me.