Sacking & firing by text message

Link: Shop boss’s idea of youth culture: sacking by text – Britain – Times Online.
An interesting one in The London Times today.

It carries this story about a part time worker of Blue Banana who was fired by text message.

She received this text from the store manager:

‘We’ve reviewed your sales figures and they’re not up to the level we need. As a result we will not require your services any more. Thank you for your time with us.”

Now, the worker, who was at home, wasn’t best pleased to get ‘fired by text’. This is understandable. The company’s director, Ian Besbie, justified the action thus:

‘We are a youth business and our staff are all part of the youth culture that uses SMS messaging as a major means of communication.
‘As we wished to spare Miss Tanner the embarrassment and expense of coming to the store only to be sent home again, we thought it was the best course of action. We would rather have spoken in person to Miss Tanner but her phone was switched off.”

Now, I don’t think that’s too unreasonable at all.

It would have been doubly annoying to have travelled all the way to the store, seen the manager and, as Mr Besbie explains, been sent home again.

Obviously you’d follow it up with a formal letter — but I think, if my services weren’t required, I’d rather know right away,