Misconstrued TN Texts- back& forth of fired vs quit with admin

by Jane Doe

(Nashville ,tn)

I had been ill for a couple of days(mon&tues) I thought it was a cold, but weds, I could bear no more & became very ill, so I attempted to call in. My administrator never answered his phone & we would often text anyway. I told him that I was ill & that I was going to the doctor. He immediately started texting, giving me all of the reasons I could not miss that day.

I explained to him how sick I was, but he continued to text & say I should have gone to the doctor the day before, etc. I finally said, in my last text, that I was “too sick to argue ” & that I was going to the doctor, period.

He texted me telling me how disrespectful my message was & that I was choosing text over calling & I texted to him “I tried to call you, but it went straight to voicemail.” He immediately called me & said “you just lost your job, no one has been or ever will disrespect me that way.”

I said ok & went to the doctor, where I was diagnosed with pneumonia & taken off work for 2 days.

I tried to call him(again) no answer, then I texted him- “I’ve got pneumonia what do you need from my doctor?” He said, “I don’t need anything, no more text messages & call at a reasonable time from Now on.”

So I called him, and told him what I had from my doctor, and was I fired? He did not respond at all, just saying “ok, ok” repeatedly.

So I sent him a text message the next day, telling him that since he had “talked so ugly to me & refused to make my work environment reasonable, I would give in and give my 2 week notice.”

He did not respond, so I called him and he said “I don’t need you to work here we’ve been fine for the past 2 or 3 Days without you.”

I then sent another message telling him that I wanted to work my 2 week notice & that if he did not let me, I would have to file unemployment. I got no answer from him.

I then called him the weekend before our payday week to ask him what to do about my time sheet, he said, “just email it to me with your resignation. Needless to say I did not.

I have these messages, and do does he, he emailed them to me. I only don’t have proof of spoken words. The interviewer did the claim under misc. she said, since I wasn’t fired for attendance issues.

There have been Several emails back and forth between the admin & myself concerning insurance hours & he even copy & pasted & emailed my FB posts and told me that he felt I was threatening him directly. We are not now and have never been FB friends and his name was never on any FB posts, which were in no way threatening to anyone.

He is insistent that I resigned, I feel it is in order to hide his impulsively firing me from his boss, which is the owner/physician of the med prac, I am a nurse with.

How can I defend what were spoken words & not texts of him firing me & do you think it will be denied? No doubt he is going to say that I quit to cover his own hide. Thanks!

Hi Jane,

I sense there may of already been some sort of tensions between the two of you and this wasn’t the first disagreement, but the FINAL INCIDENT is now in question.

Did you quit, or were you fired in the employer’s opinion for insubordination, or possibly inappropriate conduct in the workplace .. because it sure doesn’t sound like anything to do with unacceptable attendance when the last incident is so closely related to a doctor’s note .. and pneumonia.

The history between you and the admin may or may not be important to the final incident which is always of main concern when an adjudicator is trying to gather all the available information to make the initial determination of benefits based upon the actual reason and cause for separation.

And even I know a truly sick people can be insubordinate and inappropriate justifying a discharge .. even if they don’t think they were being either right before they got fired.

I am at a loss to explain for myself, why you felt it necessary to take on the burden of proof of quitting by sending a text giving your two week notice, after the alleged phone call made to fire you?

Newsflash: Even when an at-will employee quits a job, their employer can’t be forced to let them work out the two week notice.

To be smart about unemployment benefits, I would of advised you to let the employer termination stand and of not compounded your problems by bringing in the one other thing you did document .. you quitting because your employer would not accept a note from your personal physician to take two days off due to pneumonia.

The problem I see for your claim is elementary and caused by no one, but the emotional you.

You should of let it all drop with the phone call discharging your employment, instead of texting your 2 week notice invalidating you believed the discharge was for real.

What you might of done at that time to save yourself from questions about your part in this disagreement with the admin, was email or send a text reiterating the content of relevant phone conversations you two had, to help you prove what was spoken and not documented by the smart administrator .. because if it ain’t written, it may as well of not happened.

But, you still have the doctor’s note .. right?

Take the high road in the future .. the view from there is clearer if you’re trying to see how to preempt these sorts of unemployment blunders.