Email abuse
A friend of mine said she got fired for forwarding an email from her job computer to her personal computer at home. A friend of hers sent her an email containing nude pictures to her work email. She didn't know what the email was about so she opened one of the pictures. She then sent a response back to the person that sent it to her saying not to send her emails like that anymore because it could get her in trouble. She forwarded the email to her personal account to read later. A week or two later she was called into human resources and fired on the spot for forwarding an inapropriate email. Her company has an email policy that states you can be disaplined /dismissed for inaprpriate emails. She has told me that other people in the company have been put on warning for email abuse, so since she has 10 years on the job with a perfect record, she wonders if it was fair saying that there is no clear cut rule if it is left up to a group or an individual to decide which employee gets fired. The decesion was already made to fire her before she even was called in to HR. She thinks that since she transfered from a big city to a smaller one and her salry is higher than alot of the other employees, that might have something to do with it. To top it off she was denied unemployment benefits because they say she was fired for misconduct. There must be something she can do, she has a child and her finances are runing low. Can anyone offer her any advice, she is such a nice hard working person that apparently made a mistake, but I don't think its one she should loose her job or maybe house over. Sorry but anyone in an office knows better than to do this. She should have deleted the email, told her friend never to send such things to her work and if she really needed to know what was in the email, then emailed the friend from her home computer. They don' t have to give warnings. They didn' t fire her for any reason that is considered "protected" by the Federal government and she was "fired for cause" and can therefore be denied unemployment. It doesn' t matter that you don' t think it was fair, you' re not her employer. I have to tell you though, that pretty much any employer would very much think this was fair. It is sad that she' s got a child, but honestly, she should have considered the consequences of her actions more closely given that circumstance. Her best course of action at this point is to find another job immediately. She should say that she was fired for a violation of the company email policy and say that she received a personal email at work and didn' t realize she was violating policy by forwarding it home. She should say she learned a huge lesson from this and would never do such a thing again. She should not say that the email included nudes and inappropriate pictures at all. I regret to say that there' s really nothing your friend can do except start a job search immediately. Her personal circumstances are unfortunate, but - without sounding harsh - they' re not the employer' s problem. I' m sure she' s a nice person who just made an unfortunate mistake, but there' s nothing that can be done about it now, and I don' t think there' s any course of action she can take that will restore her job. Starting a job search right now if the best thing for her to do. Sorry... | |
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