Cake Business Fired My Wife After A Week At Work, Telling Her She Just Wasn't Fit For It. Now They're Telling Washington Unemployment That She Was Actually Fired For Misconduct And Needs To Appear In Court.

Location: Western Washington

Hello. A few months ago my wife was hired for a cake decorating business. When she was there, they always told her she was doing fine and actually learning quite fast in her first week. When she was hired, she told them ahead of time she would need a week off to attend my fathers funeral. As soon as we came home, as in literally when the plane landed, they called and fired her. I could hear the conversation, they did indeed just say she wasnt a good fit. No mention of any wrongdoing.

It sucked, I had to go back to work still grieving my father, we had to go into pure survival mode to keep our apartment. She got started on unemployment checks and it helped us survive long enough for her to get another job. We had moved on already, but then the other day we got a court notice that she needs to appear in court because this cake business disagreed with unemployment, claiming that she caused "choking hazards" for accidentally leaving parchment paper on a cake once (again, she had JUST started working there, and after that one time she never left parchment paper on again), saying that it caused "hours of work" for the other employees to fix. And claiming "time theft" because she was ten minutes over ONE TIME, and it was because her phone was on the incorrect time, which was also fixed.

We're both really scared. We BARELY survived with the unemployment and we dont know why this business suddenly is coming for us after already putting us in a spiral like that. We're scared that if we say something wrong we're gonna owe them money or something. For evidence, we have an email also stating that she was fired simply for not being a good fit with no mentions of wrongdoing verbal or written. I could also be a witness as I heard the whole phone conversation when she was fired and they did not mention the parchment paper or time theft. How much information should we be giving the judge? What should we mention and what should we NOT mention? We've never had to go to court before, Im so worried that we'll somehow accidentally screw it up.

Please help us!!