“BEING tangled in a web of deceit”’ means being trapped in a complex, messy situation caused by telling many lies.
When a person tells one lie, they must tell more lies to hide the first one. These compounded lies grow out of control and trap the liar.
Not quite sure if K. Mageswary R. Krishnan has ever heard of the above delicate situation but she certainly found herself tangled in a web of deceit of her own weaving.
In a recent industrial court ruling of K. Mageswary A/P R. Krishnan v Hong Leong Bank Bhd, the plaintiff has sued the bank for wrongful dismissal.
But a messy web of deceit proved to be her undoing as narrated and explained by industrial relations lawyer @cahayaetiqah.za in the human resource-themed Threads post entitled “Perkerja Buat Apa Masalah Hari Ini?”
Noting that this case involved a veteran employee of the bank with a previously unblemished 28-year employment record, the poster underlined that this was NOT about going to India while on annual leave. Problems arose when the employee was dishonest when queried.
The plaintiff in this case had started her career as a clerk with EON Bank in 1995 prior to ascending to the position of branch operations support officer at the Group Operations & Technology Division following the takeover by Hong Leong Bank.
However, that long tenure came to an abrupt end on Feb 29, 2023 with a last drawn salary of RM8,744.
According to the poster, the case involves five incidents of misconduct by the employee – the first of which was lying about travelling and her medical status at a meeting on Jan 25, 2023. She denied travelling abroad.
The aggrieved employee also claimed she had not taken the company laptop outside the home and had never logged in from abroad.
However, upon being confronted with IT evidence showing that she did do so from an IP address in India, she confessed that she had been abroad which her passport confirms. Not once but twice.
The court agreed that the axed employee was fully entitled to enjoy her annual leave as she saw fit. However, problem arose when she gave an UNTRUTHFUL answer when queried about her whereabouts thereby affecting trust issues between employer and worker.
The second charge of misconduct is related to the plaintiff’s health issues which was used to justify a work from home (WFH) arrangement despite the company having NO permanent WFH policy. She had done so for over two years.
The ‘sickly’ staff was said to have acute bronchitis and respiratory problems and needed to avoid crowds and needed to be in isolation to prevent infections as advised by a medical doctor.
The bank also found the employee’s claims that her returning to an office environment would be harmful to her well-being to be contradictory with her journeys abroad.
In this regard, the court found the employee had been dishonest in making representations to the bank.
The third charge of misconduct had to do with the employee appealing to continue WFH arrangement by stating that a mere five-minute exposure to the public had led high fever, infection and prolonged COVID-19 infection.
She further claimed to have been confined at home with limited exposure to the family.
If this was indeed the case and the employee was in such poorly health, how could she travel to India on two separate occasions when she was supposedly confined at home?
The employee’s web of deceit was further blown apart by medical expert called by the bank who testified that the staff was well enough to punch her card like a normal nine-to-fiver.
The court accepted that travelling abroad did not sit well with her representations that she needed to avoid public exposure and that home was the safest place for her.
On the fourth charge, the deceitful worker is alleged to have misused a medical certificate obtained from Sunway Medical Centre for purportedly suffering from airway cough syndrome. But she is shown to have been on a flight to India on the same date!
By her own admission, the employee said she had taken the MC to cover her lateness for work after seeing two doctors at Sunway Hospital.
The court did not treat this as a mere lateness issue but a declaration that the employee is unfit for work. It should be reasonably surmised that she was not fit to fly as well.
Last but not least, the fifth charge – concealing that she was actually having a gala time in India.
From claiming that she was in her hometown of Johor to avoiding her supervisors for the sake of privacy, the sacked staff even pulled her spouse to act on her behalf by making him respond to her departmental WhatsApp messages.
Ultimately, the court found that she has concealed and suppressed the fact that she was in India at the time.
The Industrial Court eventually found the employee guilty of all five charges of misconduct,
This case has been making the rounds among HR professionals on their social media accounts.
The moral of the story is when an employee’s conduct has led to trust and integrity issues, even a near three-decade unblemished long career with the organisation will count for little.
When the web of lies get these tangled, the court will have had little choice but to agree that the employee had acted dishonestly and that’s quite possibly the one trait that is unacceptable in the banking industry. – Focus Malaysia
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