Quote Originally Posted by Vladimir
That's usually how it goes. There is always a greater background that isn't revealed without further investigation. It's tough to get fired for an e-mail, especially in government work.
On the other hand, whenever they want to fire someone, they can just make up a lot of fake reasons and portray it as "the employee was performing unsatisfactorily", and also "did not respect several of the clauses he/she agreed to in his/her work contract". Clauses such as never to use the company's resources/time for personal use - did you _ever_ read email from work, or do your online banking, or browse any non-work related sites ? Blam, you broke a clause. Sure, everybody does that all the time, but, technically, you're in the wrong. Took long breaks (potty, cigs, lunch) ? "Employee was not committed to their job and had low productivity and discipline problems". And I can go on like that for a while, and I'm not even in HR.

Yes, of course, this is all speculation, I don't _know_ that this was the case in this situation. Just like you don't _know_ that there was a greater background etc, etc. I'm just pointing out that there's (at least) two ways to speculate about this.