I worked for a company in KY while residing in OH for the last 1.5yr. The first 12mo went perfectly fine. Work from home, gave it my all and did everything they asked, no problems. Got a new “senior” manager at the 1yr mark and she was one of the worst humans I have ever met. Passive aggressive, demeaning, dismissive, presumptuous, accusatory, and she just really didn’t like me. She was young and had zero management experience and I kept hoping that if I just did the insane task she was asking of me, she would move on and leave me alone. I was wrong.
She wrote me up after being my manager for one month, for “performance.” She didn’t even understand how our department worked yet. I was doing completely fine by all standards, my clients were very happy and nothing was behind. I talked to my boss and told him how out of the blue this was and how she made a terrible impression, and he told me it “wasn’t a big deal” and to just try to see her side or whatever. Then nothing happened for 6 months, didn’t get in trouble or have a serious talking to or anything of that nature. Never was on a PIP, all I ever had was this one written “warning.”
In December, I took 10 days of PTO because everyone else was out of the office so no work could get done/approved, and my PTO was going to expire so why not. It got approved and I took it with no worry. I arrived back at my job in January, with no work overdue, and 5 days later was fired as a surprise for “poor performance” for the previous month (December).
In the letter, they tried to defame me as you would imagine. They said they spoke to me 3 times about my performance, which is funny because I only ever had 1 official “warning.” They said I was doing a “majority” of my work outside of work hours, which is untrue. They just found out I liked to catch up on work on my own free time before deadlines, which i’m still not sure why that would be negative.
Lastly, they tried to insinuate that I had attendance issues. This is hilarious because no one has ever said a word to me about that, and I took 1 sick day in 1.5 years, was online every day 8-5, and answered every email or instant message in less than a few minutes at most. I didn’t have to sign the letter or anything, and I just said okay and goodbye.
It’s very obvious that they just wanted to get rid of me and reverse engineered the letter to get HR to approve the termination. But I’m afraid they tried to frame it in a way to prevent me from receiving unemployment. My money is running out. Do you think I have any chance of winning against them saying I was fired with cause? All I got to save as backup was my annual review that stated I was a great employee. Never thought I’d be in this position.