Billy E. Hyatt claims Pliant Corp. fired him for refusing to wear a sticker with 666 on it. Now, lest you think that the plant was run by Satan himself, it wasn’t a random sticker–the plant had been counting up the number of days in a row they had had without an accident.
To keep reading click here: 666 Firing: When demanding compliance costs you a fortune.
All the sadder a story, since the number of the beast is actually 626 (google it, you’ll see). So the company is stupid and the poor chap had already compromised his everlasting soul unwittingly before he fought back against Evil-Corp.
Lose-lose situation here.
I’ve read that it’s actually 616.
I once worked for a jewelry store that demanded I wear white feather angel wings as part of the grand opening near Christmastime, I guess since we were wish-granting angels or something. I’m Jewish, and it didn’t sit well with me, and I didn’t want to do it. The owner was OK with it but the manager thought it was this huge hilarious deal, worth making fun of me over. Furthermore this uninformed non-religious person tried to engage me in theological debate about whether Judaism mentions angels in the Torah. I was happy to wear red, to act cheerful, to help customers, wrap packages, dust and polish shelves, clean jewelry, whatever – I just didn’t want to wear the damn angel wings because it felt wrong. Instead, I wore a red leather bustier and a pair of devil horns to represent temptation. (Also subversion, har.) And I sold a whole bunch of jewelry that night, too.
I find that super amusing.
Go you!
I agree with your take on the over reaction of the company but… Did this employee not see this issue coming and raise it in advance? Maybe they could have requested the day off if they felt strongly about it. Or were they banking on a big accident and therefore the stickers going back to 1?
He did ask in advance. They told him wear it or take a 3 day suspension. He chose the 3 day suspension. They fired him anyway.
What? He was given 2 options, he chose one and they fired him? I hope some heads roll because that is not even worth worrying about.
See ya in 3-days pal, or better yet, find a volunteer to wear two stickers, laughs and jokes all around…
This reminds me of the time I got called into my supervisor’s office for wearing open toed shoes (got dressed in a hurry). It was a call center, we NEVER saw customers, EVER EVER. Enforcing stupid rules is such a time waster and morale fell considerably.
Sigh…
Ahh, the stupid burns. Don’t you know you might drop a pencil on your open toed shoe and break your little toe?
One day, when I was working in HRIS (the techy-nerds of HR) the new dress code landed in everyone’s inbox. It proclaimed no sandals. Every single female in our department (about 30 of us) were wearing sandals that day.
Ha! We all laughed and said the same thing, we’re not client facing and we’re nerds. No. Apparently the policy people got that message from a few people and two days later a new dress code appeared that only forbid open toed shoes in the plants.
That reminds me of that picture a while back of all those college aged girls in the whitehouse wearing flip flops. Maybe I’m a little old school, but I just can’t get used to flip flops in the office i don’t care how bedazzled they are and how behind the scenes you are.
Granted – some ‘grown-ups’ are still immature and make poor decisions, but something like an overly demanding dress code or hissy fits about breaks/arrivals/departures in an environment where it doesn’t affect the workflow or pose a health hazard, is simply indicative of a management team that gets mired in details, feels like they have no control, and/or has no idea how to support their team in a sensible and productive direction.
Would it not have been easier still for the company to say, ‘OK, evidently this really bothers you – so we will understand if you want to take the day off’.
Unpaid, or out of his paid leave if he had any.
Could you please arrange to have the web link properly redirect on mobile browsers. I am using Safari on an iPod Touch and the web link redirects me to the CBS mobile news page instead of your article.
Thank you