Worker is fired by text message
The biggest surprise to me is that it hasn’t happened sooner. Job offers are being sent by e-mail now and I check my e-mail by PDA more frequently than on a computer. I am sure someone has been sacked by e-mail by now.
Companies evolve in their method of communications. I rarely snail mail an offer letter. I am a big phone person but if I can’t get a hold of someone on the phone, I send an e-mail and sometimes get a response quicker that way.
I would never do that to an employee but to think of the number of times since e-mail’s popularity that I’ve received an immediate resignation by e-mail (over a dozen), I secretly laugh a little at the person that was canned using a ruder method.
{ 3 trackbacks }
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
While i have yet to be fired by email, I was asked to put a resignation in writing after my doing it verbally…I was ASKED to send an email to the appropriate people
What if the text message was not acknowledged? Would it hold up in a hearing or a court?
All that aside-it’s very unprofessional…and very uncool.
What would Miss Manners say?
That is kind of funny in a sick way. I think I’d show up for work the next day, all smiles, just to make them squirm a little, and then have to fire me in person. That’s just not right. But I do agree that it was just a matter of time, given the many asinine ways in which people give notice.
I can’t fathom firing anyone electronically. We may live in a wired society, but hopefully we haven’t lost all sense of propriety. If you can’t fire someone in person, without squirming, then maybe you should be doing it at all. The instantaneous text message seems like a knee-jerk response anyway, don’t you think?