SMS: sack me surreptitiously

Modern communication. Ain't it great?

By Kieren McCarthy • Get more from this author

Posted in Data Networking, 28th February 2001 16:58 GMT

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Office admin Zoe Halls was sacked by a text message sent from her boss to her mobile phone. "We don't need you in at work tomorrow, I'll phone you AM to explain - John", the SMS message said.

The message arrived on Sunday night, just weeks before Zoe's three-month probation was due to finish at Highway Glass - the Derby based emergency glaziers. She was understandably upset but when John Heath's phone call failed to materialise, she called him. He had turned off his phone. So she popped into the office to find out what was going on.

According to Zoe, he wouldn't even look her in the face and then started making baseless accusations about the staff not liking her, her work not being up to scratch etc etc. "What makes it worse is my boss was laughing and joking with me on Friday," she said. John also claimed that he tried to tell Zoe she was fired on Friday - something she hotly disputes.

The fact is that Zoe has little recourse seeing as she was still in her probation period. But text messaging is a particularly cowardly way of firing someone.

And so sacking is added to the text message's multiple uses - along with dumping girl/boyfriends, bullying children, abusing and stalking ex-partners, distracting you while you drive your truck into someone, sending suicide notes and attempting very slow sexual advances. Not bad for 8p a shot. ®