6 Bizarre Employee Termination Cases

Getting terminated from a job is never fun, even if the job is horrible. Typically dismissals happen over routine events such as an employee constantly being late or not doing the job well enough. But there are cases where employees have lost their jobs over crazy (and even funny) circumstances.

We’re now hearing about people getting fired over Facebook or even wearing a certain colored shirt! It seems we’ve seen more unusual termination cases recently so we thought we’d highlight six that caught our attention:

• Wearing orange can get you fired

Recently, several staffers at a Florida law firm found themselves in a predicament when they were fired for wearing orange shirts. ABA Journal talked about it and the employees say they all wore orange so they could find each other in a group after work during Happy Hour. One commenter said the manager was probably a Seminole fan and not a big Gator fan.

• Lawyer finds himself fired after public Twitter commentary

Jeffrey Cox, a lawyer in Indiana, was fired from his position during the heated union battles in Wisconsin after he told riot police in Wisconsin to use “live fire,” and other controversial commentary. Of course, his profile was set to public and his tweets could be easily found, as the blog Going Paperless wrote about. Remember: think before you tweet!

• Cisco fires new employee over Twitter comment

Another employee termination story that grabbed headlines (and was also because of Twitter) was the case of Connor Riley getting fired immediately after being offered a job with Cisco. She went to her Twitter to tweet about the job offer with some added snark of a “fatty paycheck,” and hating the work. Of course, Cisco happens to be a tech company so they monitored Twitter, saw her tweet and she immediately found herself jobless again.

• Don’t use ALL CAPS, you might just get fired

The Next Web reported on the story of a woman, Vicki Walker, being terminated from her job as an accountant in New Zealand after she constantly wrote her emails and messages in all caps, bright red font, and usually in bold. However, The Employment Relations Authority found that Walker was wrongfully fired and her employer had to pay a hefty fine. Still, not writing in all caps with bold and bright font should probably be a unwritten rule in the work place.

• Judge is fired over texting while on the job

Marion County Juvenile Magistrate Danielle Gregory in Indianapolis, Indiana found herself fired after texting while hearing cases, according to local Indiana’s WTHR. Smartphones and camera phones are banned in the courtroom, but that didn’t stop Gregory from texting about court hearings and she even was texting a married male co-worker while on the clock.

• Juror goes to Facebook during court, gets the boot

Another case of a Facebook firing occurred when a juror in a British court was asking for help on a case on her Facebook page, as reported by The Telegraph. The court was given an anonymous tip about her Facebook mishap and the woman was immediately removed from the jury. Ouch!

It goes without saying that in the professional world, common sense should rule when it comes to knowing what’s right and wrong. But as you can see, people are not always predictable creatures and as such, we’ll always have interesting employment termination cases.