Is preselling a game a day early a reason for dismissal

by Earle Ruby
(Warrington, pa. )

I presold a game a day early at a video store and was fired.
Selling of the game was strictly by accident and i can't remember doing it.
The presell was done on September 8 and I was not terminated or notified of it until September 14.
Am I eligible for unemployment.

This case has been appealed by the employer after it was determined by the State that I was eligible to collect.


Hi Earle,

Apparently, as far as the employer was concerned, it is a reason for dismissal. They can do that.

But you're asking about keeping your unemployment benefits and that's a different matter.

We need to know if the employer can prove that pre-selling a game is good enough to deny unemployment benefits.

Care to share what the determination allowing benefits states?

Or I could take a guess that it was found that what you did was an inadvertent mistake made in good faith.

Understand please that an assessment made by me in this forum is usually made from only hearing one side of the story and I do not ask questions any longer and wait for answers in this forum to continue the conversation.

It is a common scenario that a state may rule in favor of the claimant because their requests for additional information from the employer prior to making the initial determination go unanswered.

In PA this will happen because they do not have any statute which would create punitive measure for not doing so. (some states do have statutes of this type.)

The reason the state requests more information is because they want proof from the employer that "misconduct" was the reason for termination.

They may want to know:

Does the employer have a written rule which covers the reason for termination?

Was the employer warned about this before?

Does the employer have a progressive discipline policy for rule violations.

Was the employee made aware that doing this would put their job in jeopardy?

So you see Earle, when the employer appeals you must take an honest look at what kind of information they will provide at the hearing and then you must prepare to counter their argument that the reason for termination was misconduct.

Since I don't know the answers to those questions I can only go on what you said. Assessing a situation requires looking at more than one side of a situation and then you decide how to proceed.