The Martlet

I’ve never been fired before, but I imagine it’s unpleasant.

For Crystal Bell, an esthetician from Kelowna, the pink slip came via Facebook and sparked an internet debate on the ethics of firing employees electronically. This raises questions about the legal in’s and out’s of letting employees go.

Let’s go over the major problems here. First, according to reports, Bell was fired for missing a staff meeting on her day off.

Forgive me if I’m not seeing the whole picture, but firing an employee for missing a staff meeting seems a little extreme to me. Bell was apparently at the hospital with her mother — which is reason enough to miss a staff meeting no matter where you work or how long you’ve worked there.

Secondly, the employer has been quoted as saying that she just “wanted to have it dealt with that evening. I didn’t want to deal with it at the shop.”

Was she too impatient to hear Bell’s side of the story? It certainly seems that way. A simple miscommunication and now this woman has lost her job. This is what happens when electronic means are used too eagerly.

Yes, our society is high-speed. But for crying out loud, it doesn’t have to be. If the employer had remembered that her employees are actually human and not attached to the other end of an Ethernet cable, she might have handled this differently.

Bell has a life outside of being online and outside of her work. It was her day off. She was at a hospital, where you’re not allowed to have cell phones on. Furthermore, Bell had only been working at the spa for two weeks. Isn’t there a trial period or something? It seems like this woman should have been given a break.

Yes, it is tacky to fire someone on Facebook, but not necessarily because it’s electronic. What is tacky here is that Bell’s employer cared less about her employee’s reasons for missing the staff meeting than just getting it “dealt with.”

When you have people working for you, it’s kind of a polite gesture to care about them.

Despite the legal questions that Facebook firing raises, it’s a shame that Bell cannot make a move for damages. This appears to be nothing more than an experience in how not to use technology.

Ms. Bell, should you ever read this, I’m sure you can do better than have an employer who treats her employees like deletable email. No matter how much technology has come to be part of our lives, nothing can beat interacting with people in real space. Eye contact, handshakes, the whole deal — these are irreplaceable.

If other factors were involved in Bell being fired, then the situation was not accurately reported. But from what’s visible on the outside, this comes down to an ethical matter of communication. We rely a little too heavily on technology. Sometimes we just have to slow down, be patient and wait for the information to come to us.