was recently fired for time theft after a 3-week-long investigation and interrogation into previous “unavailable” time at work at a call center that was framed as a performance issue. During the interrogation, the manager pulled up my unavailable/unaccounted for time and went through day-by-day and asked me about certain blocks of “unavailable” time which I couldn't account for.
The investigation at first led to a PIP, which I met all of the expectations for, before I was fired. I asked why, since I met all of my expectations, and was then told that “any evidence of time theft is grounds for immediate termination – we were getting our papers in order.”
During all of this, the manager leading the investigation was extremely serious, cold, rude, and put nothing besides the PIP in writing. I had never heard of time theft before and the unavailable time has been about the same for a year, and no one ever mentioned it was considered time theft. We did not even have a time theft policy nor any definition of this concept. I did sometimes get up to use the bathroom or pour myself a cup of coffee, or just take a breather, but I did not realize this was considered time theft
The whole thing really terrified me and after endless googling and seeing that employers have sued employees over this concept has me really freaked out. In additional to new financial problems, I can't sleep, eat, or focus and my mental health has tanked. I feel so terrible and absolutely terrified knowing they've done this deep dive into my work time and I'm really scared.
Has this type of thing ever happened to anyone else?