Joey_P is a hillbilly pothead who lies

…or so the state of Wisconsin has on file.

Long story short, my business fired an employee a while back. He filed for unemployment and it was denied. He appealed the denial and an appeal hearing was scheduled. He didn’t show up (or, rather, pick up his phone since it was a telephone hearing) and the appeal was dismissed for failure to appear. He appealed the dismissal (the failure to appear dismissal), which requires good cause, because he ‘can’t answer his phone at work’. While I likely didn’t have to respond to that because I don’t think the UI Tribunal will accept that as ‘good cause’, I replied anyway, explaining that, in every letter between the initial denial and the appeal hearing (3 or 4 mailings) it was explicitly stated that being at work doesn’t count as an excuse for not appearing and that you’re expected to arrange for that.

When he appealed the failure to appear dismissal, all they want to know is your reason is for missing the hearing, that’s it. However, he sent in a 5 page, handwritten screed. The first page was, and I’m not really paraphrasing much, ‘I can’t answer my phone at work, please read my statement’, the following 4 pages started off with ‘May I read my statement without interruption and then I’ll hang up’. After reading it a few times and wondering why he’d put all this into his appeal, I realized something. This was a monologue he was planning to read to them at his first opportunity during the appeal hearing.

What I find even odder is that he had this prepared, implying he was planning to attend the hearing, but surely he knew he wouldn’t be allowed to answer his phone at work. Plus, he had to know that there was no way his case wouldn’t be dismissed again if he just read his statement and hung up. Think about it. Even if they allowed him to read it and he hung up afterwards, what happens next? I see two options. The first being that they ask our side some questions to which he would be unable to rebut, the second option being that they dismiss the case as soon as he hangs up.
And, I know he’s not that bright and certainly doesn’t understand the legal (or at least UI*) system. But did he really thing someone would read his monologue and say ‘well, lets just settle this in his favor and be done with it’.

Getting back to the thread title, his 5 page screed included the line “Joey P is a hillbilly pothead who lies and [owner] is a raging alcoholic that once punched me”. FTR, the owner never laid a hand on him and isn’t a raging alcoholic. While both of those, or at least the part about punching him, are unfalsafiable, no proof of them happening exists either. Both because it didn’t happen and even if it did, no camera footage of it exists (no camera footage even exists from during his time of employment) and, so far as I know, he never filed any kind of report with anyone.

Also, I’m not a hillbilly.

That’s all, just thought it was amusing.
PS, this is in MPSIMS and not IMHO because I’m not looking for any type of legal advice.

In addition to all this, he filed an unemployment claim about a few weeks before he was fired stating that we cut his hours ‘in half’. We didn’t and that was very easily proven by taking a quick glance at his payroll reports. It’s remained steady over the last few years. We confronted him about this. He was in absolute shock when we asked him. I don’t think he had any idea we’d even find out about it. I think he thought it was more like filing a health insurance claim. At one point during the interaction I made the comment that those UI payments don’t just appear, WE pay them (indirectly, we pay into a reserve fund and when the balance dips, our UI rates go up).
This current UI claim started before the previous one was even determined. He has, multiple times, claimed we lied to him and that we don’t actually pay his unemployment insurance. While whoever presides over a case, I assume, would overlook an employee not understanding the ins and outs of the employer side of the UI system, he still used that as the reason we fired him. Having another forklift incident (dumped over a big pallet of products) not only had nothing to do with his firing and also, like literally everything else in his life, wasn’t his fault (though the camera footage suggests otherwise).

You are just using Discourse’s “no duplicate thread titles” “feature” to deny a title for your pit thread!

This is exactly what a lying pothead hillbilly would say!

I resemble that remark.

Nelson: Ha Ha

I realize that I’m asking for waaaay too much. The odds of you having this screed to hand are near-zero and it likely contains personally-identifiable information. All that said, there’s no chance to happen to have a copy of this screed of his floating about, do you?

You always seemed more like an urban cowboy to me. Maybe it’s the hat.

When I saw this thread pop up on the main page, I was like, “Hm. Why is it in MPSIMS? And I thought we were doing ‘I pit X’ (no reason attached to title) from now on. Joey_P is in trouble.”

Okay. But are you a pothead who lies? Just asking. :wink:

I once filed a denial on an unemployment compensation claim. The employee had quit without cause, telling me she needed some rest and recuperation time and would live off of unemployment compensation.

When she found out I was fighting the claim, she called me. I didn’t answer (I never do) so she left a drunken screaming voicemail, complete with “I’m a gonna kill you” and worse.

I brought my phone with me to the hearing. As soon as I mentioned the call and proffered my phone, she withdrew her claim.

I do happen to have a copy, however it’s full of personally identifiable information and this is an open quasi-legal case. However, here’s a small tidbit of a relevant section.

Why use lined paper if you are going to ignore the lines? *twitch*

I’m not a hillbilly.

We got burned a while back and it was a great learning lesson for me. We hired someone, she took on a second job a few weeks later, however, she worked at our place 8am-4pm and her new job needed here there 9-5. She offered to work from 8-8:45am or 5:30 to 7pm. Naturally, that didn’t work for us, so we fired her. She filled unemployment stating she was fired for ‘misconduct’. I appealed it, told them it wasn’t for misconduct but rather an availability to work issue. I showed the court commissioner her original job application in which she handwrote that she could work 8am-4pm, I showed him our work schedule where she was on every M-F 8am-4pm since she had been employed, I showed him her time cards showing that she had been working those hours and then I showed him a handwritten note from her saying she couldn’t work those hours anymore.
I lost the case. They UI dept stated that since she was working at a new job, she’s clearly ‘available to work’. She won on a technicality.
Now what I do in cases like that, or cases where some just stops showing up, is I leave them on the schedule for the next week or two, but every day I write ‘no show/no call’ on it. Now I can say I fired them for not showing up to work, which is considered ‘with cause’ in Wisconsin.

I’m always surprised at what people are willing to put into writing or leave on a voicemail. I’ve TWICE now told people not to leave ‘I’m gonna fucking kill you’ messages on their ex-girlfriend’s new BF’s voicemail.
You want to say it in person, fine whatever, but you you leave it on their voicemail, they can hand it over to the police and suddenly you’re going to have to convince the cops you’re not about to murder someone.

That’s kinda his style. In the 15 years he worked for us, he also never, not one single time, handed me a piece of paper that wasn’t crumpled up. I can’t tell you how many times I thought to myself “I gave him this list less than 5 minutes ago, WTF did he do to it”. Finally one day I saw it. I asked him to grab something (a paper) off a counter and hand it to me. Instead of picking it up like a normal person, he palmed it. That is, he set his whole hand on the center of the paper and grabbed it like you’d grab a napkin you were throwing out.

He worked for you for 15 years? :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Look, everyone, WHY are we taking anything Joey says at face value?

I mean, all of us can read, right? Well, READ THE NOTE!

Joey P is a HillBilly POT head. Who lies.

I have got to admit, Mr. P, that I wasn’t expecting you’d have a copy, and really wasn’t expecting even a single image.

Thanks for indulging me, genuinely.

I have another (ongoing?) Unemployment Compensation case. A part-time employee who I laid off at the beginning of pandemic was asked if she’d come back to work. She replied (via text) that she would love to return to work, but only if I would pay her under the table.

Thing is, I don’t really know/understand how I could do that without facing problems if caught. It is illegal (I think). So, I received a form from the UI people asking some routine questions, including “has employee been offered return to work” and of course I answered “yes”.

Now I’m the asshole. I’ll cop to being a Hillbilly pothead, but one thing is for certain, I do not lie.

The grammar is shot in that and we can’t truthfully know what the correct way to fix it is.

It might be:
Joey P is a HillBilly POT head who lies.

But it might also be:
Joey P is a HillBilly POT head. Who lies?

It might also be commentary on the truthfulness of 60’s and 70’s English pop rock:
Joey P is a HillBilly POT head. The Who lies!