Company terminated me from Practicum because they made a slippery slope fallacy out of an honest mistake.
Full story and context:
I've been (or was) enrolling in an accounting program at a local business school. The reason why was because I believed the credentials I would receive after graduating would give me substantial leverage in getting a job in the industry. I've passed all my required courses, but the only thing in my way was my 140-hour Practicum, and that's when complications begin to arise. The first company I did Practicum with ghosted me after leaving home sick early, subsequently leading to my first withdrawal. The second company terminated me for arriving late too many times, but that was on me. The college's policy goes like this: If I were to get withdrawn three times, I won't be able to graduate and lose my chance of getting those credentials. So knowing this is my last chance to graduate, I got to do Practicum for a third company and tried my utmost to fulfill those hours and graduate.
But today, without thinking, I sent an email to everyone in the head office asking who's responsible for refilling the coffee dispenser in the lunchroom, and the supervisor called me out on it. You'd think that after acknowledging my mistake and agreeing not to do it again, it would be over right? Wrong. A minute after what was nothing more than an honest mistake, my supervisor told me I was being terminated, telling me that they think I'll eventually do the same thing with confidential company info and no longer trusts me. I don't know what part of "It was an honest mistake" and "It won't happen again" they didn't understand, but sending a short and simple email asking an innocent question to an entire department is tantamount to mass compromise apparently, because of the slippery slope fallacy these irrational people were pulling on me. The minuscule likelihood of me doing that shit knowing the consequences, my given situation with the college, and my moral compass, and ANY evidence (or none thereof) in my mistake and the email itself even REMOTELY suggesting that I would willingly do such a thing was never addressed, only that it's (technically) possible. And that's literally all that mattered to them regarding my unfair termination. And now that my employment with this company is history, so is my enrollment at the college, and now I'm back to where I started but with thousands of dollars in student debt, all over an honest mistake, in which the absolute worst-case scenario is no less than 2k employees nationwide being aware of an empty coffee maker in the head office's lunchroom. Unless a commercially sold Van Houtte coffee maker is considered confidential company property.
TL;DR: I was terminated because of the slippery slope fallacy over an honest mistake which wasn't even that big of a deal to begin with, and all that time and money spent on my education was for nothing.