I was fired for Gross Misconduct today.

[HoldingOnatoday]

Just need to talk to someone outside of my family really. It’s been a tough time recently, lost my mum and then I got Pneumonia and ended up in intensive care for six weeks.

I returned to work on Friday and had an investigation meeting where I was accused of submitting fraudulent expense mileage claims. I disputed some which were left on an agree to disagrees. Some id accidentally left in, where I’d been to visit clients homes, the clients had cancelled and I’d forgot to remove the mileage. Its auto done for us but alas I should’ve manually removed them. I accept responsibility and this is on me.

I’ve put in £10,000 (I do a lot of driving/stay in hotels) worth of expenses in the last year and £900 was found to be fraud. These were the cancelled ones I’d not deleted. They’re going to contact the police and I’m not sure if anything will come to it. It was done more job negligence (I’ve not been up to par) than maliciously. I’ve been scattered brained, driving 7 hours a day for work often and running on empty.

The thing is I’m good at my job, I’m a good person I’d like to think. But I’m so broken by this, I’ve finally got a good credit rating, which will now be damaged by mortgage repayments and bills being missed. I’m also scared at the prospect of going to prison/declaring this to future employers. I have offered to pay back and this was rejected.

Im not looking for Sympathy, just for a way forward because I really feel like ending it all today. I’ve applied for Christmas temp work today but not sure if anything will come from it.

So sorry OP, this too shall pass.

Stick to your guns that it was an honest mistake. They must know this. Who in their right mind would so transparently steal £900 and risk their employment, credit rating, mortgage etc?

Wishing you better luck in the next few months, you are having a bad day, but you are not a bad person.

It sounds like your employees have really bad processes /manager sign off that allowed this to happen so it wasn't picked up sooner.
I can see if a mileage sheet is prefilled in and you are doing lots of journeys how easy it would be to forget to delete a cancellation, particularly if you have been through bereavement and I'll health.
Of course you should have checked the accuracy but so should your manager.
But 10% is a high error rate.
It may be worth phoning acas or your union for advice to check due process has been followed.

Definitely start a benefits claim which one will depend on your circumstances so see if you can ring cab

You need legal advice.

I agree.

I'm sorry you're going through this. If you genuinely feel like harming yourself seek help for that first and worry about the job later.

I've worked in HR and my husband is in Discipline and Grievance in the public sector - it's incredibly difficult to fire someone for Gross Misconduct. Like almost stupidly difficult. He's been going round and round for months with an individual who has admitted to and tested positive for using class a drugs while in work. It's taking forever because even with that there's so many loopholes.

If you're being completely honest here about exactly what happened and exactly how it's been treated by the company then I'd contact ACAS or an employment solicitor to discuss your options, because it sounds like a pretty woolly thing to slap a gross misconduct label on.

You need to speak to ACAS and get yourself some legal advice as soon as possible.

Legal advice might be a good idea. Maybe they can help you to agree that you pay back the £900 and resign. That will be better for your future employment and they might agree that it saves them the hassle of having to proof fraud. But you’ll need legal advice to put some pressure on them.

I've just read your update.
So if I understand it

1. expenses are put in automatically, in advance
2. Sometimes the expenses are cancelled autonatically but sometimes you have to do it manually
3. You check and submit them
4. Your manager checks them and approves them but never checks

That process is awful. Defibatwly contact your union or ACAS.

This.

It seems they are well aware of the flaws in their own system, but instead of investing in fixing it, they're passing the responsibility for correcting errors to individuals and then penalising those individuals if they mess up.

This is not what a decent employer would do.

I would contact ACAS.

As others have said, speak to Acas and get legal advice. Your boss should be checking things before approving them, for a start. This sounds extremely unfair.

OP, home insurance often includes legal cover which can be used for employment issues.

You're employer sounds unreasonable. I wish you all the best.

It cant be that difficult as our security guard was recently fired for gross misconduct.

It says in our contract what gross misconduct it

Your employers HR have to follow a set procedure in order to fire you , so get advice from ACAS to make sure they are doing this properly and make sure you have a copy of the employer grievance policy. Make sure you have a copy of all your expense claims so you can double check them, and make sure you have copies of all correspondence.

See if you have any legal cover on your house insurance where you can get some legal advice.

It sounds like your manager is negligent too if they are checking it and not realising.

Hi OP, I work in HR so just wanted to offer my two pence worth.

First of all, if you are feeling that low then please do call The Samaritans. They are lovely and are there for a chat at any time.

I do feel for you and I can see how it has happened. From an employer's perspective though almost 10% of your claims are "fraudulent", and over a long period that doesn't look good. £100 a month over 9 months is a massive margin of error so I can see why to them it looks intentional rather than a mistake. I understand the reasons it has happened, but companies do unfortunately have to cover their own backsides too. This will be why they have said they are contacting the police. We usually do if there is any suspicion of theft or fraud so that we can obtain a crime reference number. It does not mean that you are going to be prosecuted. If you hear anything from the police you just say that it was an error, you have offered to repay the money and that will be the end of it.... I promise. I have had cases of employees being caught on CCTV stealing equipment that have still not been prosecuted by the police, they simply don't have the time to focus on this low level so please try not to worry.

What we want as a company is to say we suspect fraud, here is our evidence, this is the decision made and here is the crime reference number. That covers our backs but I'm very sorry because it doesn't help you.

Christmas temp work sounds like a good plan. Speak to ACAS if you want too, they're really helpful and it doesn't cost anything.

This seems like a system designed to make errors. You haven’t submitted claims wrongly. You’ve forgotten to take them off. Also your boss not checking when the system is like this, a lot of the blame lies with them. That’s what they are paid for if he is also signing them up and it’s easy to make errors.
You need more legal advice.

Speak to ACAS today OP.

In the meantime I just want to reassure you that you will not go to prison. I doubt you would even go to court as you have accepted fault and offered to repay. Put that offer to repay in writing if you are positive that this mistake has been made.

If your boss was supposed to be checking, you can argue that he wasn't doing his job

Sounds like they have this system in place to catch folk out. Your manager obviously should have picked up on these errors. Get some legal/union advice.

I honestly think your employers have let you down here. Has your health been assessed if you are on oxygen? You raised concerns about driving 6 hours a day and taking an extended area and nothing was done? You’ve also had personal issues with managing your mums health (were work aware)?

I actually think it’s a miracle you haven’t had a very serious car accident and your employer should be grateful for that!

I would also speak to Acas and get some legal advice (do you have it as part of home contents insurance)

Stay strong OP, I don’t think this is quite clear cut for them to pursue this

If the client cancels the meeting, does that get recorded in the system so that the company has visibility? If so, why don't they correlate the cancelled meetings with the automatic mileage submissions and remove them?

Have you failed to maintain/track that data?

It seems that their system is poor and could be to blame, but if you've been submitting weekly expense claims and deliberately snuck through a few meetings each week, then you don't really have cause for complaint regarding the gross misconduct.

How long have you been employed OP? Yes definitely contact Acas and I would also suggest that you put in an appeal against the dismissal. Any form of theft is usually treated as gross misconduct but it sounds as though you’ve got good mitigating circumstances to put forward to explain why it happened, particularly if you’ve got an unblemished record.

Thank you. No word if anything will happen to my manager for approving them. Guess that’s confidential. I will speak to ACAS.

I'm happy to leave, I’m needing time to recover anyway, I was just so worried about going to prison etc. everything is accurate I’ve said, I’m not dismissing anything or unaccepting anything just that it was a genuine mistake even if that’s unbelievable to some and that’s fine also.

ill speak to the Samaritans also and go from there.

God I feel for you...

My inital thoughts are as follows...

false expenses are about 10% that seems crazy high...so on that basis gross misconduct isnt unreasonable
BUT the reason is at least in part due to the "automated system"
Given that I struggle to imagine your peers arent ALSO accidentally expensing incorrectly.
Are they being investigated too?

I'd be looking for a good employment lawyer first and foremost and id also be thinki g about a subject access request because i think they might have gone on a fishing expedition to try and find a reason to sack you due to time off...

I would not be surprised if you didnt have a counter claim / cannot agree a settlement with them whereby they pay you out...

Do you have evidence that calls were cancelled and the mileage wasn't claimed?
i.e. did you average 1 cancelled call a week, and erroneously claimed for 1 a month, so were cancelling the mileage claims manually for some and you just missed some? Or was every call that was cancelled and not automatically deleted by the system claimed for?