My Employer Is Denying Unemployment Because They Say I Violated My Nda

Location: Texas

I’m sorry if this is long, but there is a lot of backstory. I worked for this CPG company for 4 1/2 years. This company manufactured supplements. I worked in the marketing department. Around 9 months prior to when all of this took place, my director, whom I got along very well with, quit, and a new one was hired.

In my time working for this company, I have always gotten along very well with all of my directors, but this one was different. She came in hot and negative right off the bat. She would start conversations saying things like “Well, your department doesn’t have a good track record…” and “All the teams are disappointed in you.” and “You are really letting everyone down,” Which was all news to me. I had always had amazing performance reviews from both managers, peers, and direct reports. The CEO would regularly say things like “What would I do without you?” and “You can never leave us!” So this feedback felt out of the blue.

I tried to identify issues, but the complaints were vague. I spoke to other people on the team to see if they were having similar issues, and they were. No one was happy. Within a month of being there, she had made half of her team cry. After several months of this, we had a company-wide meeting where our CEO said that she knew people were complaining to each other, but rather than address any of the reasons for company morale to be so low, the CEO said that this talk must stop immediately and would not be tolerated. I was surprised by this reaction. By this point, I was coming in early, working through lunch, leaving late. Most nights I would get home well after dinner, cry in the shower, and fall asleep. And still show up the next day to negative feedback from my director. It was awful. And the company’s response was to act happy or else?

After one particularly bad meeting with my director, I came home in tears and vented to my family. This is where I may have messed up, but I was literally told not to talk about it at work. I have a teenage daughter I will call Lilly. Lilly has a very black and white veiw of right and wrong and is also very protective of me. I’m sure it was jarring for her to see me so upset. Lilly took it upon herself to create a fake account and went on the company’s social media accounts and started leaving nasty comments. For the record, I did not ask her to do this, and I did not know she was doing this. Once it was done, she told me about it. She was so proud, but I was very upset. I told her that she had no business doing this, and she needed to promise me to stop and that she would delete the accounts, which she did.

I thought that would be the end of it, but the next week we had a company-wide meeting (again) where the screenshots of the comments were displayed on a huge screen. Lilly had assured me that all of her comments were anonymous, but from the content of the comments, it was very obvious that it was either me or someone related to me. I confessed what had happened with my daughter and assured them that I had handled it, but I was fired immediately.

They are now denying my unemployment claim, stating that I violated my NDA by complaining about work at home to my family and speaking disparagingly about them online (which I never did)

Do you think that my appeal has any chance?