Fired via text message

Cowardly or creative?

British woman canned from Blue Banana via 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."

Several senior staff members at Blue Banana, a body-piercing and jewellery shop based in Cardiff, defended the decision.

But company director Jon Taylor added that an internal investigation was underway to see if "the ultimate action was ideal".

The retailer claims it tried to reach Tanner directly "five or six times" and passed on a message through her boyfriend before the text was sent.

And store director Ian Besbie added that the dismissal method was fair because texting was a part of "youth culture".

"We are a youth business and our staff are all part of the youth culture that uses SMS (text) messaging as a major means of communication," he said.

The company employs about 120 people in Britain, many of them aged under 21.

 

If they can send a text to her cell phone, they can call her cell phone.

 

And they wanted to fire her by telling her boyfriend?

Clueless.

 

2MCM, it says they tried to contact her "5 or 6" times. I presume one was a call to the cell phone.

The text messaging seems really odd, but it isn't the weirdest thing in the article. Before the text message was sent, they tried to pass on a message through her boyfriend!

Who's work would use a boyfriend or girlfriend to pass on information like this? It doesn't say that they specifically told the boyfriend that she was fired, but if they are sending her a text message, I don't see it being a stretch.

 

Do we really expect a body-piercing shop to do things differently?

 

U R So Fired!

 

I guess they could have tattooed it on her.

 

A mushroom tattoo to the face? Like a pig-blapping?

 

Well, when Carrie Bradshaw had a boyfriend break up with her on a post-it, you knew it was only a matter of time before the advent of the text-axe

 

Those wacky Welsh!



Wiry strong.

 

Think the message to her boyfriend was "Please tell katy to call her boss at work" or "Please tell Katy she's fired"

I tend to think it was the former but when she didn't call in after several attempts to reach her, a text message is a 'paper trail' in some ways, I guess.

 

It's terrible when your long-term career, at the body-piercing and jewelry shop, is so cruelly nipped in the bud.