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This is something that happened where I worked a few years back. It was a small store, corporate owned. There 5 employees plus a manager. Since there was so few of us, we ended up becoming pretty good friends. One of the employees who we'll call L, had been with the company for over two years and was the second longest tenured employee at the store. She was also well liked and generally very good at her job.
So at some point another co-worker of mine, P, decides it would be fun to get everyone from work (except the manager, who was a good 5-10 years older than the rest of us) together on a Saturday night and basically just hang out at his place for pizza and drinks and a general good time.
Since we all worked together, inevitably we got talking about what we did and didn't like about the job and the customers and suppliers and whatnot we had to deal with daily. L was in particular very vocal about the manager, who had only been with us for four months. She basically said the manager was a complete tool and one of the most incompetent people she'd ever had the displeasure to work with (he was incompetent and most of us weren't particularly fond of him). Anyway we all had a good laugh making fun of him and that was that.
Or so we thought.
Somehow the manager found out about what L was saying about him (we never did find out who ratted, but we think it was a new guy we invited along who had only been with the store five weeks and was the only one of us who never worked with the previous manager) and got really pissed about it. He went whining to the DM about the incident and while I don't know the exact chain of events that followed, a couple of days after we hung out, L was fired for the comments she made.
We were all pretty upset at this because she'd been one of the best performing employees and I think had only a single write up on her record for the two plus years she'd been with us. L herself was upset as well as angry and she felt she'd been unfairly punished and that the company had over-reached its authority in firing her over something that was said away from work and off the clock.
To make things worse, I heard from L when she went in to pick up her last paycheck (yes it could have been mailed but she wanted to get it in person), the manager had conveniently managed to "misplace" it and she left empty handed. Eventually the company had to re-issue the check through the mail, but she went 4 weeks without pay and barely covered her bills that month.
I told her she should fight the company on the termination, but she's since found a new job that she really likes and a manager she gets along with it hasn't been that high on her priority list.
I still think of this situation frequently. Was the company right in what they did and should L have kept her feelings to herself? Or was the company out of line and should L fight back?
So at some point another co-worker of mine, P, decides it would be fun to get everyone from work (except the manager, who was a good 5-10 years older than the rest of us) together on a Saturday night and basically just hang out at his place for pizza and drinks and a general good time.
Since we all worked together, inevitably we got talking about what we did and didn't like about the job and the customers and suppliers and whatnot we had to deal with daily. L was in particular very vocal about the manager, who had only been with us for four months. She basically said the manager was a complete tool and one of the most incompetent people she'd ever had the displeasure to work with (he was incompetent and most of us weren't particularly fond of him). Anyway we all had a good laugh making fun of him and that was that.
Or so we thought.
Somehow the manager found out about what L was saying about him (we never did find out who ratted, but we think it was a new guy we invited along who had only been with the store five weeks and was the only one of us who never worked with the previous manager) and got really pissed about it. He went whining to the DM about the incident and while I don't know the exact chain of events that followed, a couple of days after we hung out, L was fired for the comments she made.
We were all pretty upset at this because she'd been one of the best performing employees and I think had only a single write up on her record for the two plus years she'd been with us. L herself was upset as well as angry and she felt she'd been unfairly punished and that the company had over-reached its authority in firing her over something that was said away from work and off the clock.
To make things worse, I heard from L when she went in to pick up her last paycheck (yes it could have been mailed but she wanted to get it in person), the manager had conveniently managed to "misplace" it and she left empty handed. Eventually the company had to re-issue the check through the mail, but she went 4 weeks without pay and barely covered her bills that month.
I told her she should fight the company on the termination, but she's since found a new job that she really likes and a manager she gets along with it hasn't been that high on her priority list.
I still think of this situation frequently. Was the company right in what they did and should L have kept her feelings to herself? Or was the company out of line and should L fight back?
I AM the evil bastard!
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