Based on the title alone it would probably seem completely reasonable that someone would be fired for this doesn't it?
A long time ago I was fired from a fast-food job for missing ONE DAY of work. It was a low-level job and they had tried to contact me but this was back when the only phones that anyone had were land lines and try as they may to contact me I had simply gotten my schedule mixed up and was at the beach on a day that I was supposed to be at work waiting tables. When I returned the next day to go to my job I hadn't heard the messages on my machine because my roommate and I had a very simplistic answering machine that didn't save any messages and operated solely on a tape. It didn't help that my roommate was a stoner and didn't write any of it down despite the fact that we had a whiteboard right above the phone. I did not see him at all that ill-fated day when I went into work only to have my boss tell me "I have good news and bad news! The good news is that you don't have to work today... the bad news is that you no longer work here!"
I thought that was a dick statement on his part and even when I appealed to the top management about my dismissal they ruled that I was still fired and there was no reason to pursue it any further. I gave up and just went and found another job across the street from that place and it turned out to be a much better job anyway. I guess things just happen for a reason sometimes.
I realize that things have changed a lot since the 90's but even if they were like they are today I would have never tried to take them to court for wrongful dismissal because that isn't how I operate. Someone did though and her violation of your need to actually turn up to work in order to keep her employment managed to keep her on the payroll of the Italian school system after missing 20 out of 24 YEARS of work there.
One news outlet that reported on this called now ex-teacher Cinzia Paolina De Lio an "icon of our times" and they did not mean this in a flattering way. They meant it in the sense that there are folks out there that have a sense of entitlement so strong that they think they can just do whatever they want and never face any consequences for it. Back in 2017 she actually was fired for the first time after a very long string of absences from her teaching job but she took the school system to court for wrongful dismissal and actually WON. The school was legally compelled to give her the job back even though she made absolutely zero changes to the way she approached the job after they were forced to take her back.
She continued to be absent and go as far as to assign grades totally at random for students, many of which she had never met, and the school system had no choice but to accept this.
On the rare instance that she would actually turn up to class the students said that she was almost impossible to learn anything from and that she was rarely even attentive to the classes in question and was constantly staring at her mobile phone. Some students refused to participate in class which seems pretty reasonable to me.
Imagine getting hired for a job, then not really ever bothering to ever turn up for it outside of rare occasions, then when you do go you do the job extremely poorly, then when you are fired from the job - which certainly would be deserved - you sue and force them to hire you back. That's just clown world stuff right there.
Ironically, when she was contacted by a news outlet to explain her side of the story, she responded that she was "at the beach" and was not prepared for comment.
So if you were thinking that it is only the United States and especially Florida where truly crazy crap happens in regards to the law, you would be wrong. It seems pretty messed up in Italy as well.
