Legal Question in Business Law in California

I was recently suspended from my food/beverage retail job. Over the past few months, I was acting as Assistant General Manager under my GM, who was not fulfilling his requirements described in his job description and was then fired. The two weeks following his termination, I was to be "Acting GM" in his place until I could fulfill my training to be promoted to General Manager, or until we could find a replacement. I was then asked to be transferred to a different store to continue my training. Whether this information is relevant to my question, I'm not sure, but I thought I might put it all out there. On my last shift before my transfer, I was taken outside by my mentors for a discussion about time card edits. I was notified that my name had popped up a red flag because I was making too many edits on the timecard, my own and my employees. I then notified them that because my GM wasnt doing it, and none of the other managers knew how to edit punches, I took the responsibility on myself to edit ALL punches, including my own, because I had no instructions otherwise. This was all under the supervision of my GM at the time, of which all of these edits he approved. I was then notified of my suspension because I had edited too many punches and had edited my own punches. I was asked to leave and was notified that I would receive information on my status of employment by the end of the weekend (this was on a Thursday). I have NOT been contacted by HR (although I have made many attempts) and have not been contacted by any of my superiors (again, have made attempts) and it is now Wednesday. My argument is this: I was never aware of any specific number of edits that I was allowed to make before my name popped up as a red flag, did not receive any verbal or written warnings that what I was doing was against company policy, and was obviously not receiving the proper training by my GM because he was fired two weeks ago! Also, in order for edited punches to go through payroll, a general manager has to sign off and approve of them. My general manager did all of these things, I never signed off the edited punches to be passed through to payroll. Do I have any case against this? Do I have any argument? Company policy states that even though the GM signed off on these punches, I am responsible for any edited punches myself, not the GM. I was unaware of this and do not recall any written agreement being presented to me stating this policy. Is there a certain amount of time they are given before they are forced to terminate me? Do I have a case for wrongful termination? I have been out of work for a week with no word on what my status is and would like to file for unemployment soon. Is there such thing as being suspended indefinitely? If anyone can give ANY advice as to what I should do that would be great! Even if it is just "that sucks, get a new job" I want to know if this is worth fighting. Thanks!

Jen

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