Fired for Poor Performance

by Anonymous
(GA)

I live in Ga and was wondering if I could collect unemployment if I was fired for poor job performance. The company said that I did not fulfill my job expectations and that I was not efficient. I was not efficient because the manager was always giving me extra work and constantly pulling me off my current task to work on other stuff They had given me 2 negative evaluations prior to firing me. Both criticized my work performance only, never any personal reasons or work ethic. Every time I asked for help or clarification on a task (usually regarding one of the extra work she assigned me), the manager would not help me and instead would just go and make a notation in her file that I could not perform my duties. She criticized and embarrassed me in front of my co-workers and did not allow me to use my own judgment or make any decisions, therefore limiting control over my duties which resulted in poor and efficient job performance. Does this constitute misconduct?




Hi,

I've written about poor performance many times before. It is being able to show the differences between being a negligent lazy ass or allowing your personal problems to interfere with your job performance vs. an inherent inability to perform (an inability, generally thought to be an employer's mistake of "mishiring" .. unless you lied about your qualifications on your resume or application) or showing that the employer itself was prohibiting satisfactory performance because the expectations were not "reasonable".


One manager with a strong dislike for an individual could start down a road full of retaliatory acts that result in this type of discharge .. it's why I suggest documenting and actually making a complaint via your company's grievance procedures to create or implicate this behavior before being terminated.

Winning an appeal when you're denied unemployment for not performing to the "reasonable" standards and expectations of an employer can be one of those very contentious battles.

Get a rep for the appeal hearing for best results because what happened to you is typical when a manager or supervisor feels like an individual is under-performing to their personal standards .. or when they have been instructed to reduce the size of a department without laying off.

Ironically, the one piece of documentation I used to ask for to nail a case such as yours was not just the poor reviews, but a review that said you had at one time, shown yourself to be capable of doing the job to the expected standards .. it's what was relied upon to show that the performance you were fired for .. was negligent and that is misconduct .. whereas an inability or inefficiency is very difficult to sustain a finding of misconduct.