McDonald

[Zidane]

That wouldn't be grounds for dismissal and had the same happened here it would have been taken to employment tribunal, which would have almost certainly sided with the employee. It really is only in the US where employees are treated like dirt, with employers having absolute power over employees. It's disgraceful.

I am...almost speechless.

 

The UK clearly treats employers with no respect :/ just the same as this employee showed her boss zero respect. Its really only in the UK where employers are treated like dirt, with employees being able to flat out disrespect and make a fool out of them on their time and money to an entity which really has no hand in day to day affairs and will only get a slap on the wrist. Its disgraceful.

[theyarecomingforyou]

I am...almost speechless.

 

The UK clearly treats employers with no respect :/

What a backwards way of looking at it. At the end of the day everybody needs to work and it behooves a society to protect the rights of employees. People come before profit. If you allow managers to dismiss anybody who challenges them or that they simply dislike then they become little more than dictators, which is a dangerous tendency to support.

[Bryan R.]

of course it probably happened at some point, just like the mailman used to get his coffee.

 

But there is a big cultural difference between the way we in western europe (I think, might be overgeneralized) treat people in service jobs and the way Americans view them.

 

Some examples:

 

- soldiers: you go and greet them, thank them for their service and so on. We most of the time don't see them as anything special or some people even think about them as people who were too stupid to get a normal job so went to the army to play with guns

- firemen: sure, hard en tough job, but we won't stand in awe around them, they get paid for what they do

 

same goes for police officers etc

 

I realize that might sound synical, but I guess it's just really a big cultural difference

They risk their damn lives for you. Huge cultural difference indeed.

[ramesees]

Coming from the UK there needs to be a happy medium between the rights of the employee to not be fired for trivial things (i.e you come into work one morning and the boss decides to fire you) and the rights of the employer to get rid of staff that are not performing as they should and just taking the pi** with regards to their work patterns.

 

Employees who are like this are a liability and I'm sure we've all had colleagues or subordinates who having passed a probation period or whatever are just not up to the job and are keeping a seat warm when that position could be given to another person who would perform much more competently.

[theyarecomingforyou]

They risk their damn lives for you. Huge cultural difference indeed.

They choose to do that job. I respect them but I'm not going to worship them - if they didn't do it then somebody else would. To be honest I have as much respect for people who work customer service jobs (like McDonald's) and constantly deal with abuse or the street cleaners who have to work terrible hours picking up after people all for an insulting wage.

[Zidane]

What a backwards way of looking at it. At the end of the day everybody needs to work and it behooves a society to protect the rights of employees. People come before profit. If you allow managers to dismiss anybody who challenges them or that they simply dislike then they become little more than dictators, which is a dangerous tendency to support.

Nice avoiding the real issue at hand here :P.

 

If the following happened "She asked, he said no, she got her feathers ruffled in a text message" and she got fired, I'd question it. At best that would have been a verbal warning solely for her response in the text message.

 

The problem is, she didn't stop there. Her contacting corporate was uncalled for and not appropriate in the slightest; especially to get them to bully his franchise into giving out free meals.

 

What part of this is hard to comprehend? This isn't a civil rights, gay/straight, or other major movement were she was discriminated on...she let her feelings take the best of her and acted irresponsibly.

[Bryan R.]

They choose to do that job. I respect them but I'm not going to worship them - if they didn't do it then somebody else would. To be honest I have as much respect for people who work customer service jobs (like McDonald's) and constantly deal with abuse or the street cleaners who have to work terrible hours picking up after people all for an insulting wage.

They can all be considered service jobs but still, to me, there isn't really any comparison between zero skill labor and someone who will risk their lives for others in the name of their job. They're not just doing a job at that point, they're heroes. A salary isn't enough to offset their risk. They and their families should be compensated much more than they are in the form of benefits if anything should ever happen. 

 

Anyway, on topic, this termination I think is not justified but there isn't regulation to prevent silly terminations.

[Memphis]

Nice avoiding the real issue at hand here :P.

If the following happened "She asked, he said no, she got her feathers ruffled in a text message" and she got fired, I'd question it. At best that would have been a verbal warning solely for her response in the text message.

The problem is, she didn't stop there. Her contacting corporate was uncalled for and not appropriate in the slightest; especially to get them to bully his franchise into giving out free meals.

What part of this is hard to comprehend? This isn't a civil rights, gay/straight, or other major movement were she was discriminated on...she let her feelings take the best of her and acted irresponsibly.

Allot of companies by policy cannot fore you for going above your manager period. My hospital is that way and we have a strict no retaliation policy. And before you say it, no I'm not union I'm in a at will right to work state and that's how it is. Employees should feel 100% safe to take any issue above there manager and even to skip there manager altogether. I hope you are never a manager. You remind me of the managers I met before I got into a professional field.

[theyarecomingforyou]

 

Coming from the UK there needs to be a happy medium between the rights of the employee to not be fired for trivial things (i.e you come into work one morning and the boss decides to fire you) and the rights of the employer to get rid of staff that are not performing as they should and just taking the pi** with regards to their work patterns.

 

Employees who are like this are a liability and I'm sure we've all had colleagues or subordinates who having passed a probation period or whatever are just not up to the job and are keeping a seat warm when that position could be given to another person who would perform much more competently.

The trouble with a cutthroat system like that is that there's no room for the people at the bottom. I mean, why bother employing a disabled person or a woman if a young man straight out of school is more physically able? Why bother with old people if somebody younger would be better? There is legislation to prevent such workplace discrimination, so why shouldn't similar protections apply to other workers? Only in situations where a person is not doing their job or doing so to the detriment of the business should dismissal be the go-to option.

 

It's disgusting the way that people who work at Walmart can be fired for anything, like helping a woman fend of an assaulter - sure they later backtracked but that was only because of the negative media coverage. The four employees that stopped an armed robber weren't so lucky. We've seen the same thing repeated all over the United States. There can be an argument over the correct balance but one thing's for sure: the US has got things horribly wrong.

 

If the following happened "She asked, he said no, she got her feathers ruffled in a text message" and she got fired, I'd question it. At best that would have been a verbal warning solely for her response in the text message.

 

The problem is, she didn't stop there. Her contacting corporate was uncalled for and not appropriate in the slightest; especially to get them to bully his franchise into giving out free meals.

There's nothing wrong with taking the initiative to contact corporate. If an employee has concerns about the judgement of their superior it is perfectly reasonable to take it above them - that's what the chain of command exists for. You should never have a situation where questioning your manager gives them the right to fire you - that gives them far too much power. Continued insubordination is a different matter entirely.

 

[FloatingFatMan]

Alright so if we apply UK laws to America (this situation)...we're still good!

 

Justified reason: She ignored her boss' decision on the matter and consulted corporate as well as directly challenged it over a laughable medium such as text messaging. That is highly disrespectful and is definitely justified in a termination to me.

 

Had she accepted his response and paid for the meals on her own dollar, I'd be patting her on the back with the rest of you. Ironically, her goal of making her boss look foolish by thinking corporate would have backed her backfired...yet if she had paid without making a ruckus, everyone would immediately be on her side and the boss would have looked like a fool (even-though being "pressured" to give out profits is a pretty terrible thing).

 

You can only be fired out of hand here for gross misconduct (violence or theft, basically). For everything else, you have to have 3 verbal warnings and 1 written warning, and these cannot be given all at the same time.

 

At most, had this happened here, she'd have gotten a verbal warning.

[ramesees]

The trouble with a cutthroat system like that is that there's no room for the people at the bottom. I mean, why bother employing a disabled person or a woman if a young man straight out of school is more physically able? Why bother with old people if somebody younger would be better? There is legislation to prevent such workplace discrimination, so why shouldn't similar protections apply to other workers? Only in situations where a person is not doing their job or doing so to the detriment of the business should dismissal be the go-to option.

 

It's disgusting the way that people who work at Walmart can be fired for anything, like helping a woman fend of an assaulter - sure they later backtracked but that was only because of the negative media coverage. The four employees that stopped an armed robber weren't so lucky. We've seen the same thing repeated all over the United States. There can be an argument over the correct balance but one thing's for sure: the US has got things horribly wrong.

 

I am not saying that because someone is disabled or elderly or a woman in a physically demanding role that they should be let go. My post that you quoted mentions nothing like that.

 

I was actually meaning the bolded part of your post when writing my own. I work in IT, specifically software development and have seen countless "colleagues" who are bone idle, unwilling to learn, have poor quality of work, lousy attitude etc.. In these cases there are too many hoops for the employer to jump through with regards to "letting these people go" (a diplomatic euphemism for firing them and throwing them out on their ear). 

 

I agree with your paragraph on Walmart - it is disgusting that an employee can be fired for any reason. In that case and many more like it, the employer has too much power and this needs to be curbed otherwise gross abuses abound. 

[Hurmoth]

You can only be fired out of hand here for gross misconduct (violence or theft, basically). For everything else, you have to have 3 verbal warnings and 1 written warning, and these cannot be given all at the same time.

 

At most, had this happened here, she'd have gotten a verbal warning.

Every company I've worked for had a handbook with those policies written in them. That was voluntary to protect the company and the employee, not government forced them to do that. So workers are protected here.

 

With that being said, low skill workers are much easier to replace, so they have a little less protection there, but so what? Fast food jobs are a dime a dozen. And again, I don't think we're seeing the whole story here. And she also has unemployment as a safeguard against her termination.

[Bryan R.]

It's disgusting the way that people who work at Walmart can be fired for anything, like helping a woman fend of an assaulter - sure they later backtracked but that was only because of the negative media coverage. The four employees that stopped an armed robber weren't so lucky. We've seen the same thing repeated all over the United States. There can be an argument over the correct balance but one thing's for sure: the US has got things horribly wrong.

People shouldn't be fired for what I believe should be covered under the Good Samaritan law or Duty to Protect. But the law is very loose and doesn't concern with employee/employer relationships. Maybe it should. But still, it wouldn't have saved this woman.

[jerzdawg]

You can only be fired out of hand here for gross misconduct (violence or theft, basically). For everything else, you have to have 3 verbal warnings and 1 written warning, and these cannot be given all at the same time.

 

At most, had this happened here, she'd have gotten a verbal warning.

Hey.. if they dont like it.. they can get a job that has a union... then you can do whatever you want and keep your job!

[notuptome2004]

 

 

Are you all forgetting that she ended  up paying for the meals herself out of her own pocket and  also her fellow co-workers  pitched  in .  The fact is  MCD   supports are troops and  local fireman and police and  it is stupid not to  on some situation not to give them free  meal or so and you knwo what who is to say that that 24 order was not for victims  or something of the fire.

 

 

So she went over  her bosses head to Corporate  the fact is she did so because at some point they  gave Free or reduced  priced  meals to service men  be it armed forces or local fireman or police . she had every right   and she was just doing the kind thing   And  nowhere  in the  news article or anything  did  it state the fireman expected to get the food for Free . so that blows some of your  guys therios out the water thinking  something happened that never did happen 

[ninja502]

Also, since when is "freaking" a swear word anyway?

 

heck  kids say worse then that in school now and get away with it