Multiple news outlets are reporting that an employee who received a $5.99 bottle of barbecue sauce from his employer as a holiday gift was fired after he used an anonymous Twitter account to complain.
Graham Slaughter at CTVNews.ca reports that, apparently, the sweet and tangy gift paled in comparison to gifts in prior years which had consisted of a box of junk food. So, the employee tweeted: “What kind of multi billion (sic) dollar company gifts it’s (sic) Canadian employees barbecue sauce as a holiday gift? Yet the USA employees stuff their face with an actual holiday gift box!”
And it sounds like he would have gotten away with it too had it not been for those meddling kids his mistake of tagging the company’s Candian and American Twitter handles in the tweet. Whoops.
But, wait a minute! The tweet was from an anonymous Twitter account. How did anyone connect the dots? Mr. Slaughter explains:
The day after he sent those tweets, [the employee] said he got a phone call from his manager. Somehow, he believes the company had figured out who was behind the account.
“He called me by my Twitter name,” [the employee] said.
He said the manager told him he needed to delete the tweet, but he already had. After sending the tweet, [the employee] realized that he’d previously tweeted a photo of him buying tickets for a WWE event in Vancouver. The image shows his workplace computer and parts of his workplace in the background.
D’oh!
According to the employee, his Canadian manager fought hard to save the employee’s job, but ‘corporate in America’ wanted him out.
Ironically, had the employee been American, complained on social media, and had other co-workers support him, he might have engaged in protected concerted activity and kept his job.