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What exactly is the offense? Using someone else's card to open the door?
If an action is against company policy, it's a potentially terminable offense. It doesn't matter if the employee was aware of the policy or not. The employee knows a policy manual exists.
If an action is in the grey zone regarding company policy, and HR employs humans to interpret both the action and the policy, it's possible and potentially likely that the grey area action could be a terminable offense. Humans do what humans do, which is behave like (imperfect) humans.
People get dismissed for good, and not so good, reasons every day.
Grey areas become black and white very quickly, in the eyes of management, if the business outlook changes. If a company loses a customer contract, commodity prices go up, or a competitor lowers price in the market, management will quickly look for ways to reduce cost. This can and does include reducing employee cost using any and all means at their disposal.
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