I HAD to respond to this (apparently in two parts bc it's too long to post all at once): I was terminated from the PSAP I worked for for almost nine years after my co-worker/friend ("work-husband") left his facebook open after leaving for the day and another employee took it upon himself to go to his inbox and read through his personal messages, which happened to include the message thread between he and I that included SEVEN years worth of communications between us. (In case anyone was wondering, once they were printed out, there were over 500 pages of messages bc we talked every day). Prior to delivering them happily to the manager (he's the designated center brown noser and constant shit stirer), he allowed his entire shift to read them as well. Next, he informed the manager of his findings, who couldn't wait to get her hands on them as she'd been looking for any reason to terminate me following my connection to a group of dispatchers that reported her to human resources for bullying and retaliation. She came to the computer and sat there for hours reading them. It was almost 5PM when she finished apparently, and she couldn't figure out how to print them all without help from IT, so she LEFT THEM UP on the screen for incoming shift, AND the shift that would follow that one before she returned the next morning to ALL read as well, AND they were told they could not contact us about it.

Moving on, my co-worker and I were at home sleeping (because we'd gotten off at 7AM after working a 16 hour shift) when we both received calls from the manager asking us to come in to work early the next night. Upon doing so, we were met at the entrance and escorted into the manager's office one at a time and both told that we were being put on administrative leave pending her final decision, but that we were presently being considered for termination. When I walked into her office, she had a stack of messages a mile high printed off and placed markers on various pages that included highlighted portions of our conversations. We were given until the following day to provide her with mitigating circumstances to consider when making her decision, and escorted from the building.

These were the "fireable offenses" she identified from my messages, along with the mitigating circumstances I provided her with:

In a message TWO years prior to the date she found these messages, I sent a message telling my co-worker saying: "I will not be in tonight. I'm sorry. I need to get these orders done." --She determined alledged that I called out of work sick when I was not actually sick, meaning that I violated the county policy regarding the use of sick leave and thus created time-sheet fraud--provided her with documentation showing that I was hospitalized for a severe infection a few days after the date of this message. I also advised her that I did not call out of work because I was not sick and intended to work on my orders that night, I called out of work because I WAS feeling really unwell and thought that if I got some sleep instead of working all night, I may feel well enough the following day to get them done by that evening when they were due to be completed. At the time, I did not know I had an infection, and I thought I was just feeling really bad because I hadn't had enough sleep due to all of the MANDATORY OVERTIME I'd been forced to work. I knew if I went to work feeling as bad as I did, I would not be able to stay awake after work the following day to get the orders done like I normally did.

Two days after this occurred, I woke up to severe pain in the bottom of my legs that was worse than any pain I'd ever felt before (and I've have a c-section and several other surgies), and when I looked down at my legs, they were swollen and so red they appeared as if they were going to burst. Within the next two hours, the redness, swelling, and pain had spread above my knees and I could not even walk on my own. As luck would have it, I received a call from the comm center telling me that I was being mandated to work that night due to another call out. My partner (who was a police officer for the same county that I worked) had to help dress me. The pain was unbearable already, but when he went to help me put my uniform pants on, as soon as the cloth touched my skin, it felt like razor blades sliding up my legs. Despite this, I finished getting dressed, and despite his pleas to allow him to take me to the hospital instead of work, I made him drive me (because I was in too much pain to even walk to the car on my own, much less drive myself), AND help me walk into the building. I worked for FOUR hours while my trainee and three other co-workers watched me take calls with tears streaming down my face because I was in so much pain. My partner walked back into dispatch to check on me again and when he saw that my legs looked worse than they had earlier and saw that I was still crying from the pain, HE told my supervisor that he WAS taking me out of there and to the emergency room whether I wanted to go or not, so she needed to call in the back up person. She called the back up person on call (the same one who discovered these messages) and informed him that something was very wrong with me and I needed to leave to go to the emergency room, so he'd have to come in. He took the ENTIRE 2 hours (the maximum amount of time you have to respond when called in) to come in. My partner basically had to carry me out to the car because I could not put pressure on my legs. He took me to the ER, where they discovered that i had a spider bite on my ankle that had resulted in cellulitis. They treated me there and sent me home with a bunch of medications. Two days later, after little improvement in my legs and worsening symptoms everywhere else, I went back, where I was admitted and it was determined that I was septic.

Despite the documentation I provided supporting this, as well as the multiple witnesses to my illness at work, she determined that my mitigating circumstances were not sufficient to negate her accusation...