Unemployment Appeal Hearing

Location: Alabama

Hey there! I need some help. Not gonna lie, I'm incredibly scared and nervous about this. Back in January, I was fired from my job for messing up a lunch punch one day. The next day, I was booted. They told unemployment I was fired due to "misconduct."

A little backstory: There were people all over the building (not me, not just my department, a lot of people) that were going to get lunch, but clocking out after they got back to the building, so they would have a longer lunch. My manager stopped me after I went and got my food one day for MAYBE 10 seconds and said, "hey make sure you're clocking in and out properly for lunch." That's it. Basically left it at that. Okay, cool. I was doing just that. A few weeks later, I go to lunch and forget to clock out before I get my food. When I get back, I clock out so there's something in the system AT ALL, and go to tell my supervisor about it. She wasn't back from her lunch yet, so I went and ate, came back, we got busy, so I didn't have the chance to say something to her. Next day, when I get back from my lunch break, I'm pulled into HR's office and told that I'm fired. They had said that I received a warning about it before and that I continued to do it anyway. None of which is true. What they're counting as my "warning" was the 10 second conversation my supervisor and I had in passing that one day. I had no formal verbal, write up, sit down conversation, none of it. I didn't sign anything, there's no paper trail, there aren't even any witnesses to this conversation. I received ZERO official warning, but was terminated the very next day.

So I have my appeal hearing coming up soon, and I don't know what to do or expect. I don't know how to swing this in my favor, the success rate for stuff like this is very low. I don't know what I need, how to prepare, any of it. And I'm honestly scared we'll get five minutes into it and whoever is listening to my case will just say, "Eh I think you're lying, have a good one" and call it. I dunno. I'm probably just paranoid, but I don't have high hopes, and I don't know what to do for my hearing. Any and all advice will be very much appreciated!