The State of California is very clear that the sequence you've outlined is a firing. An employee needs to be the sole one setting the last date for it not to be a firing.
Say you hire Troy Hunt to do an audit (security, IG, finance, anything), then repeatedly block them from accessing the information they need.
They then email you saying "I need access to this data to be able to do my job, otherwise there's no point me being here and I should move on to something else"
Another example. You hire a sales person on commission, but then deliberately stall the payment of commissions for cashflow reasons. They say "Look, I'm buying a house in 6 months, so you need to start approving these commissions or I'll need to find another job"
Is your stance that any statement from an employee that a problem with their role is severe enough that they can't do the job they were hired to do, or that the compensation they were promised (whether that is money, career development, publication of papers, etc) is cause for immediate dismissal?
I just find it strange to focus on the very subjective whether or not the "demands" of an employee are reasonable, rather than the far more objective "Is this an explicit resignation".
To the company, every demand is unreasonable...
And every negotiation/collective bargaining begins with overstated demands, that's hardly unusual.
They didn't work "out that exit date with her in that email". They told her she was no longer an employee effective immediately. That is a firing, legally and otherwise.
