Ricocheting Tweets of Impulse

"What kind of multi billion 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!"
In previous years, Mehaidli complained, Fastenal doled out gift boxes filled with candy, beef jerky, cookies and M&Ms. 
"We always really appreciated that [When previous years' gifts contained candy, beef jerky, cookies and M&Ms]. I work really hard. We get pushed really hard to reach our sales goals. I felt I gave this company so much and I felt really disrespected when I was given barbecue sauce as a holiday gift."
"Well, it’s always kind of good to hear someone admit they’re wrong, or somewhat wrong. It definitely could’ve been handled a different way."
"I’d been with the company for six-and-a-half years and I’d never been written up once."
"There was nothing, no one had seen it, [his complaining tweet on his anonymous account with not one follower] no one liked it, no one commented. It was just a dead tweet floating around Twitter."
"The company has already admitted to wrongful dismissal. They said this could’ve been handled in a different way."
"I wouldn’t say it’s regret … I let my emotions get the best of me at first. That’s all I’ve got to say."
Hussien Mehaidli, former Fastenal Co. Canada employee, Burnaby, B.C.

Hussien Mehaidli, a 27-year-old from Burnaby, B.C., said he was fired from his job after complaining over Twitter about a bottle of barbecue sauce given to him as a holiday gift.

"I am not going to deny it. We did terminate an employee."
"Calmer heads didn’t prevail over this. Nobody reached out to me to say, ‘Really? I am getting fired over a tweet?’ It’s an incredibly unfortunate event."
Fastenal CEO Dan Florness

"[The response to the article was] a little shocking [with some readers falsely accusing them of being involved in the employee’s firing]."
"Most everything has been positive defending the company. Except for a few people who didn’t read the article."
"And that’s what concerns us the most. We had nothing to do with what transpired with the gentleman. And if people would just take the time to read the article: we just sold the product."
Gary Lalonde, owner, Get Sauced

Ah, social media and that twitchy Twitter trigger-finger. It's come back to haunt the 27-year-old branch manager of Fastenal Canada, a branch of Minnesota-based Fastenal Co. who was outraged at Christmas when Canadian employees were given a grill scraper and a bottle of barbecue sauce as their Christmas gift, when they had been accustomed to a grab-bag of edible goodies which they knew the American employees were gifted with. Both the Canadian and Mexican branch employees were out of luck; grill scraper and barbecue sauce it was.

The company explained in its defense over the issue of the varied gifts to its employees that as a result of customs concerns they found it easier this year to just supply each branch with equal funding and let the managers decide what they would buy to dole out to their employees. Who might have thought that as a result some would be offended and wreak their frustration by posting a complaint on Twitter?

The astonishing thing is that this man's Twitter account is rather moribund; it is anonymous, it has no followers and even fewer to view the tweet; no one 'liked' it, and it was speedily deleted by the man who after a few  hours of airing his disgust 'sobered up'.

But someone saw it. 'Someone'? The employer, that's who. The Twitter account boasted no picture of its owner and he hadn't identified himself on it as an employee of the company. Someone at head office, however, tracked his feed when he bought World Wrestling Entertainment tickets at his workstation, and identified the employee in question. The result of which was that he was summarily let go.

He's now more than ever aggrieved over the 'unfairness' of it all. The company is not exactly delighted that an employee they fired is now preparing to sue them for unlawful dismissal. And the manufacturer of the sauce is uber-annoyed that they and their product have been dragged into a social media frenzy of people taking 'sides', pleading that they had nothing to do with the contretemps that has embroiled them.

Is calling your employer the Grinch on Twitter dismissal-worthy? Mike Blake/Reuters

Had the company head simply called the errant employee in to discuss the situation, to express the company's disappointment and dissatisfaction with his choice of protest in a very public forum and reached an agreement with the employee that it was an unwise performance and one that wouldn't be repeated, no blow-up on social media would have occurred. Now that embarrassment to the company resulted in a firing over a briefly-posted tweet, and an impending lawsuit looms, the publicity surrounding the company is far more injurious to its reputation than the mere tweet might have been.

As for the employee himself, he has done himself few favours. On the one hand, he believes he was a loyal and hard-working employee of a company that failed to appreciate his efforts -- he later discovered that irrespective of what the gifts given out for Christmas were comprised of to the company's U.S., Canadian and Mexican employees, the cost was equal for all; $27, leading him to express his pique, which cost him his employment.

But his rash action in posting the tweet, and his latest action in putting together a lawsuit to bring the company to account for his firing over such a slight error in judgement, will certainly fail to impress future employers when Mr. Mehaidli goes out into the employment market to peddle his talents in the workforce. Interestingly enough, Canadian arbitrators have confirmed in the past that disparaging  your superiors and company on Facebook is cause for discharge from employment.

Fastenal in Winona, Minn. recently fired a Canadian employee after his tweet complained about the company’s Christmas gift