U R Fired ~ Employee Fired By Text Message
 

LONDON (AFP) - A company has defended its decision to sack one of its staff by text message, claiming it was keeping in touch with youth culture.

Katy Tanner, a 21-year-old sales assistant, received the message while she was off work with a migraine, the South Wales Echo newspaper said Friday.

The text message said: "We will not require your services anymore...Thank you for your time with us."

"I don't think it's right to just text someone. At least they should have talked to me face to face," Tanner said.

"You're not allowed to text in sick, you have to phone. The fact that they texted me is a bit of double standards."

Read the rest of the article http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20060804/od_afp/britaintelecomjobs
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:eek: :( :mad:

A hot, steamy, saturated in fat, foul smelling mess. I'd be trying to get paid. That is so unprofessional.

don't agree...but we are living in an electronic world...i can't imagine being in that predicament...especially without any prior warning....

If you can text in sick, then they can text in termination. And that would have to be in your employee manual. In this case, she coud not text in sick....:mad:

All I can say is WOW

Wow!
 

I feel really bad for that person, but, at the same time, that is funny as I don't know what. I agree though, I would definately try to get some money out of the situation. They must have violated some policy by doing that. No matter how far into the future we get, that is still very unprofessional. Even an e-mail is kinda wrong if one has worked at a place for a long time.

LMAO!! Am I wrong for laughing?

NO! :D

I agree. Somehow I get the impression that this wasn't the young lady's 1st time calling in "sick". The employer was probably just plain sick of her or fed up. Let's face it she's young and probably does this a lot. You can't expect a lot from a vast majority of today's youth b/c they're young and not that reliable. Not to say that an older person wouldn't be b/c there's just as many lazy "i'm calling in sick" older adults as well. I can't bring myself to feel sorry for her. It's funny to me. :p :p :p

No cuz that's exactly what I did. Ole girl probably wouldn't answer the phone so they did the next best thing--sent it in writing. LOL

ETA: Okay I read the article and it was a body piercing and jewelry store--not some major corporation. They did try to reach her directly. Most of their employees are under 21. So all-in-all this doesn't sound out of line.

That reflects how much the company (supervisors) feel about her feelings.

DANG:eek: She must have been one-more-bottom-shelf employee. They should have added......You may now finish 'playing' sick.

lol at the professional-sounding text message. This reminds me of Carrie and the post-it. :p

Come on now, they couldn't put a dang gone stamp on an envelope and sent her a letter terminating her. What ever their motives where, they were wrong for this. However, this mess pretty funny, and I hope she wins something.

At one of my previous jobs they were gonna FedEx this lady her termination papers b/c they couldn't get in touch with her. She wasn't coming in and not answering the phone. They didn't end up doing it though, which was bogus b/c the next day she came in and they let her work all morning long before firing her.:eek: Everyone in the office knew too. That's messed up.

At my last job they fired my a$$ over the phone. It was so bogus. They called a whole bunch of us, one by one, from the Florida office and laid us off:eek: I mean, the phones just kept ringing and you knew if your name was called it was over. That was the worst. They even had the nerve to tell me to return anything of the company's that I had. I wanted to say that all they had given me was a headache. About a week later they gave everyone left in the office raises! I was like :rolleyes:

I think that it was very unprofessional and poor management training on the store's part. The article also said that they told her boyfriend to tell her that she was fired. I don't know what the labor/HR laws are like in England, but I have the feeling that this would not fly in America.

No, because this was funny to me too!
I guess they really didn't want her services anymore. :D

I figured as much. They treated her with the same respect she had been treating them. I don't see anything wrong with it.

I don't think even here in the US that there are any legal stipulations about HOW you can fire someone. I think if the company wanted to hire someone to skywrite over their house that the employee was fired, they're legally within their rights. There's no law (that I'm aware of) entitling workers to confidentiality when being fired or limiting the employer as to how they can do it.

Of course, this story happened in England, so I have no idea what their laws are like, but I still don't see any government legislating about how an employer can terminate an employee.

The only rules in the US are when there are state employee laws. Some states are "at will" and you can quit or be fired with no particular reason. Some have much stricter rules.

There was a big deal in France about allowing under 25 year olds to be fired with no reason in their 1st 2 years. This was supposed to make people more interested in hiring them. Instead they just got pissed off. I'm not sure what the rules are in France but there must be some sort of labor laws.

Of course, none of this applies to England and I would suspect that she called in "sick" after one too many nights out on the town.

Every state except for Montana are "at will" states. "At will" doesn't really mean much these days, either...you can file claims against your previous employer at will, too.

That being said...to my knowledge there are no laws regarding the method of notification of termination in the US.

At will means a lot still. A company can't mandate you to stay and you can't make them keep you. Unfortunately America is a land were people can also sue-at-will for anything including employment, but it doesn't guarantee that you will win, but it's really a pain in the butt. If the employer has all their ducks in a row, they should be okay. I will search my HR books to see if there are any stipulations as to how you can fire any one.