by Anonymous
(Missouri)
With the company I worked at we had a point system. If you called in it was a point or you received points for dress code, ect. I worked nights and couldn’t find a sitter for my daughter (I live in an area where I have no friends or family and daycare closes at 6 pm) so I had to call in. I was terminated because I called in too many times. Can I still get unemployement?
It’s is going to depend Anonymous. The first thing that strikes me about what you said is that you worked nights and you couldn’t find a sitter. It probably strikes me first because my experience trained me to look for ways to argue in favor of an employer such as:
If you accepted the job knowing it was nights it follows that finding adequate reliable childcare was your responsibility .. not the employers.
This is not to say you can’t overcome what I think may be a weakness, but only you know the details about why you couldn’t secure adequate childcare and why it should not be considered misconnduct … which by the way is defined by Missouri as:
An act of wanton or willful disregard of the employerâs interest, a deliberate violation of the employerâs rules, a disregard of standards of behavior which the employer has the right to expect of his or her employee, or negligence in such degree or recurrence as to manifest culpability, wrongful intent or evil design, or show an intentional and substantial disregard of the employerâs interest or of the employeeâs duties and obligations to the employer.
Missouri states this about absence from work:
“Absences due to illness or family emergency are absences caused through no fault of Employee and as such cannot be willful misconduct, especially if properly reported to Employer.’ Garden View Care Center, Inc., v. Labor and Industrial Relations Commission, 848 S.W.2d 603, 606 (Mo. App. E.D. 1993).
One of the things you do have going for you is the point system, if this type of system does not incorporate some type of allowance for removing points for infractions that would not be considered misconduct … they become an obstacle the employer has to overcome.
So it would depend on the circumstances. How many times you called in etc. I think you should address each point as a separate circumstance and focus on the ones that individually should not be considered good cause to be discharged… per Missouri’s definition of misconduct.