Sacked for Gross Misconduct - Questions

[Inca]

Re: Sacked for Gross Misconduct - Questions

What's the saying? 'Judge not lest you stand to be judged'? Everyone has a 'back' story,,the point of places like this is to garner free advice from people that either know what they're talking about (because they deal or have dealt with the issues posted on here and have a wealth of knowledge to fall back on) or have suggestions that could help,,to guide someone in the right direction.Not all advice is welcomed with open arms,some times the truth stings,but it is advice given for the right reasons,,because it is asked for

[MattIR021]

Re: Sacked for Gross Misconduct - Questions

I agree. But I also think there is a lot more to this than you are saying, and that it may not be at all in your interests for that to be the feature of a court case!

If you can prove the breach of the DPA - which I suspect may not be that easy - then you can report it to to ICO. Which I would expect to benefit you in no way - at best they will get rapped nuckles for this, and possibly not even that.

But in terms of the employment, well, to be honest, if I had a gambling addiction, drank myself under the table every night and rolled up into court hungover, then the local rag might take an interest. if it was a quiet week, in a quiet month, and they couldn't find a story about someone not having paid their TV licence. If they even noticed. So if you had a journalist following you and your problems (and in saying that I am not judging you on them - anyone can get addicted to anything and that's part of the knocks one takes in life) then it must have been a very interesting story. So your employer said something along the lines of "he isn't really a problem, he didn't do anything wrong, he's just been under a lot of stress recently"? To try to deflect a story that was damaging to them and to you? In terms of damages, this doesn't amount to anything, which pretty much closes the door on legal action - the story about a gambling addiction would have done all the damage without anything else, and if anything, a period of ill health or stress might be considered a mitigation. Many people are more understanding of a problemmatic behaviour when they believe there is a "good explanation" for it. It may not be the way things were or are - but people are more forgiving of a health problem than an addiction in general.

Matt - it seems abundantly clear that for a whole variety of reasons, you and the employer "needed" to go your seperate ways. Frankly, it takes a rather stupid employer not to be able to achieve a fair dismissal if they want someone dismissed. Everything indicates that they were not that stupid. And you left it too late anyway. You may not have legal recourse, but that doesn't mean people her may not have some good advice for you. You do not strike me as a daft person - you could have googled unfair dismissal and found out in seconds that you couldn't claim. You came on a forum instead. That suggests to me that you may feel that there is more to this than simply a straightforward legal answer, and maybe there is other help people could give? It strikes me that you may have made some foolish choices in your life and that has led to some bad consequences. Well hell, if we all wrote down our own foolish choices we could paper the Great Wall of China! Twice probably! Nobody here cares if you made some foolish choices - probably the worst that anyone can say is that they were foolish. But you seem to have dug a hole and may need a hand getting out of it. If you give people here a chance, I think you'll find a few who will be willing to give you that hand.

Of course, I might also be talking twaddle and you have a nice new job and everything in the garden is rosy - in which case, just ignore me and I do eventually go away...

Hi Eloise,

You are right there is a lot more to this than meets the eye, I would rather not make the whole thing public, it's had enough of that already! But let me be clear I'm hear for help getting out of it, I'm open to advice and harsh realities, hence why I am here.

Thanks,
Matt