People are fired in all kinds of rude ways, but they typically don’t make the news. Get fired via Facebook, though, and the world goes “huh?”
Crystal Bell, fortunately, wasn’t humiliated via any public communication; her boss sent notice via private message. According to the Calgary Herald, Bell, who’d been employed at a spa only two weeks, skipped a staff meeting on a day she wasn’t scheduled to work.
This answers Smokey’s question: How the hell you get fired on your day off?
Other questions go unanswered, though, as those who are not self-employed may be taken aback by the impersonal method of termination. Bell’s boss defended the move saying she tried to call but Bell ignored her phone.
Still it raises the question of whether this is an isolated incident or the wave of the future: getting the digital ax via email, social network, instant message, yikes—Twitter? Will someone get fired in leet?
Blaise Alleyne at Tech Dirt plays out that scenario:
@unfortunatesoul btw you’re #fired sry
Unfortunatesoul’s likely response: @bgboss i can haz welfare chek?
As someone with a communication background, let me say that this probably isn’t the best way to go about it. If management is unconcerned with the employee who is fired, management should consider the remaining staff and how they perceive the act. As they internalize and empathize, such indifference may contribute to I’m-just-a-cog-in-the-wheel bitter disloyalty in the future.
