“...unemployment more often than not will side with the employee unless there is extensive documentation from the employer.”
You mean that unemployment won’t side with the employer, or employee?
Her situation is definitely not “gross misconduct.”
In my experience unemployment more often than not sides with the employee over the employer.
I have been involved in some cases were the employee was let go for cause, not for “performance” but for misconduct or things like not showing up for work (no call/no show), repeated instances of tardiness and unless we had a long list of documentation including progressive disciplinary records, documentation that they had received a copy of the specific SOP or policy or the EE handbook with their signature on it, more often than not unemployment would side with the employee, saying that we hadn’t proved our case.
We could have an employee who was a total screw up at work - very poor performance, low quality work, repeatedly written up for not following SOP’s or procedures or company policies and even being confrontational or hostile to their manager or co-workers (short of a physical assault) and we typically didn’t even bother contesting their unemployment claim. Some employers are more aggressive in contesting claims but we felt it wasn’t worth our time and effort unless we were very confident that we would win.
One of the few times we won an unemployment appeal was in the case of an employee who was sent for and failed a drug and alcohol test under reasonable suspicion (he was disoriented, slurring his words and his manager and a co-worker smelled alcohol on his breath). We sent him to our EAP and he had to enter outpatient treatment before and as a condition of returning to work. He completed six weeks of counseling and weekly drug and alcohol tests and returned and a week later he nearly electrocuted himself by bypassing a safety on the machine he was working on and failed yet another drug and alcohol test at the hospital.