There are times when an employee is wrong. But there are other times when a middle manager launches an attack, with only a flimsy argument. I think in these situations you do have to stand your ground, because if you don’t, people won’t realize that you were actually in the right and not just a lucky person being cut a break.
These are the sort of situations where in my past positions as a programmer, I sort of didn’t stand up enough. I sort of bit my tongue and took it in stride, then later these flimsy arguments were used to justify actions against me that were really motivated by personality clashes.
I don’t play soccer, but in a soccer game, the refs can only blow the whistle if you actually commit the foul. And if the ref blows the whistle and you didn’t really commit the foul, you have the right to complain about that.
Again I’m the sort of person to just says “no big deal, who cares.” Well if you don’t defend yourself, everyone thinks the person who blew the whistle was right.
Now if the upper management is doing this stuff, that’s when you have got to look for another job.
It’s possible to find fault even with someone who is doing a good job overall at their job. If someone who has an assist to turnover ratio of 5 to 1 gets fired and someone who has a ratio of 1 to 5 gets continually forgiven, that is office politics.