teen fired via Facebook
 

The lovely thing about Facebook is that it saves so much time. Why bother to call anyone or make arrangements to actually see them face to face when you can slap something on their Facebook page and, voila, we're friends?

Perhaps the management at Cookies in Leigh, in the cold, forbidding north of the United Kingdom, are busy people. Because, according to a deeply felt description in the Daily Mail, they decided to fire one of their workers by leaving her a message on Facebook.

It seems that Chelsea Taylor, a 16-year-old Saturday worker at this no doubt salubrious cafe, was sent out on an errand to get some, well, cookies for the hard-working staff, according to the story. Why a cafe would not have cookies, I am not too sure. Why a cafe called Cookies would not have cookies sends my mind into a world that was last accurately described by James Joyce.

Sadly, it appears that Taylor managed to lose the 10-pound note that the smart cookies gave her for the cookie purchase. Ten pounds (roughly $15) buys you quite a few cookies, even of the somewhat overpriced McVities milk chocolate digestives which are, perhaps, some of the most evil, delightful things ever created by British culinary mass production.

Still, it doesn't appear that any misgivings were offered to Taylor by the painfully hungry Cookies management until she logged on to Facebook at home.


A message from the manager of Cookies, Elaine Sutton, according to the Mail, read: "hiya Chelsea its Elaine from work. Sorry to send u a message like this but bin tryin to ring u but gettin no joy. I had to tell the owner bout u losin that tenner coz obviously the till was down at the end of day. she wasn't very pleased at all and despite me trying to persuade her otherwise she said I have to let u go. I'm really sorry."

At least that's what most of it read. For the remainder may I force you to take the remainder of the day off for emotional reasons. Sutton wrote, according to the Mail story: "I'm really sorry. If you call in in the week with your uniform I'll sort your wages out. Once again I'm really sorry but it's out of my hands. Elaine xx."

I am sure there is more to the story than this heartfelt, focused message might offer, although Cookies refused to comment. The Mail reported that Taylor's mom offered to replace the delinquent banknote. And Sutton does say in her sweet missive that she tried to contact Taylor by phone. Might she have left a voice mail?



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Good grief, how unprofessional. I work with college students, and I know it can be very hard to reach them (I swear they never check email anymore). I've resorted to Facebook as a means of contact. But I would never conduct business of this magnitude that way. If that's the only way you can get hold of her, fine, tell her to come in and see you.

And hey, let's write in a professional manner, huh? Not text-speak.

Everything about this pisses me off. Chickenshit.

Are you sure they aren't just ignoring your emails? Have you tried doing delivery and open confirmation to know when the email is received and opened?

Employers of college students should do the same thing that many colleges and universities (and professors) do. Tell the students that all correspondence is sent to their inbox and there will be no attempts to reach them beyond that. Therefore, they are responsible to keep their inbox clear and to check their emails. Then anything they miss is completely on them.

The actual story from The Daily Mail.

As for the guy who wrote about it in the article that DS linked, :rolleyes: at Leigh being in the "cold, forbidding north of the United Kingdom." Maybe he should try looking at a map instead of trying to be oh-so clever.

I've done that for more important emails, and honestly, many of them either click "do not send notification" when they open it or they never open it. I have actually gotten notifications months after sending the email saying it was "deleted without opening."

Interesting point you make. I've actually had this debate with fellow coaches recently. For years, I wrote into my rules that you just HAD to check email, and there were still those that just didn't. So this year, I started sending every message by email AND Facebook (general messages, like "practice is moved" or whatnot, not anything personal like in the story above). It seemed to work. One of my fellow coaches told me I should just demand they check email, but he also has a problem with team members complaining that he doesn't communicate well.

I don't know what the solution is. I read too many things saying that the millennials aren't going to change, so we should adapt our communication to them. On the other hand, I don't really feel that's right. Every other generation has had to adapt to standards, why shouldn't they? I guess it's a pick-your-battles situation.

Yeah, it did me too until I read where they were. It's par for the course up there with the Yorkists.

Manchester is in the North. The Far North.

They mean Northern England when they say Northern U.K., as "Northern U.K." encompasses the North of England and all of Scotland.

I'm :rolleyes: at you for not knowing that.

Manchester is in the North. The Far North.

They mean Northern England when they say Northern U.K., as "Northern U.K." encompasses the North of England and all of Scotland.

I'm :rolleyes: at you for not knowing that.

Yeah, it did me too until I read where they were. It's par for the course up there with the Yorkists.

Yes, it is in the North of England, but Manchester and Leigh are about 160 miles from London -- closer to London than to Edinburgh (which is in the south-east of Scotland).

Not sure who these "they" is of whom you speak. It wouldn't include many Scots in my experience.

Emailing them is enough adaptation. :) They better be happy that we are the ones who don't mind emailing. There are still coaches and professors who neither send nor check emails.

Every semester, it never fails that a couple of students miss important announcements and opportunities that were distributed via email. I just smirk and remind them that THAT is on them. Clean out your inbox and check your email. The End. :)

Firing shouldn't be done by e-mail/voicemail/over the phone anyway - it should be face-to-face. As a matter of fact, I've worked at companies before where it was company policy that all firing needed to be done face-to-face.

Seems perfectly reasonable to me. Lose your employer's money, get fired. If you work at a place like this, you are replaceable.

Expecting professionalism from a place where the management probably didn't graduate from high school is expecting a bit much.

^ No.

Getting fired for 10 or 15 bucks is a bit ridiculous. If she has a history of this, fine but it's not like she stole it and plus (rightfully so) she offered to pay it back.