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

Grim Deprivation

"The Charter [Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms] does not protect against trivial limitations of rights."
"I find that the provision of powdered milk does not constitute cruel or unusual punishment."
Federal Court Judge Alan Diner

"Not surprisingly, when these changes were introduced, inmate grievances related to food issues spiked."
"Unresolved demands regarding inmate dissatisfaction with food [likely played a role in triggering the December 2016 Saskatchewan riot]."
"Playing with the food of hungry and frustrated prisoners can have unintended detrimental effects."
Ivan Zinger, correctional investigator, Office of the Correctional Investigator

Warkworth prison. Pete Fisher/Postmedia

The Correctional Service of Canada introduced a new National Food Menu in January of 2015. as a cost-saving measure. The new menu brought in standardized meals to be served across the country to federal inmates. Part of a larger cost-cutting program, federal costs for inmates' meals were cut back by an estimated total of $6.4 million, the 2017 annual report o the Office of the Correctional Investigator pointed out.

The new, standardized menu reduced the cost of the prison service on meals to $5.41 daily for each inmate in the federal incarceration system. The menu is construed to provide 2,600 calories as a daily intake as recommended for men between the ages of 31 and 50, while meeting all the nutritional requirements for good health set out by Canada's Food Guide. An estimated $3 million was saved with the elimination of fresh milk alone, and the substitution of powdered milk.

English muffins were replaced with toast, and vegetable selection was also reduced; type, not quality or quantity served. The investigator, Mr. Zinger, attributed this very issue, the food menu change, to a riot that left one inmate dead, and eight inmates injured as they went berserk in January of 2016, at Saskatchewan Penitentiary. The riot caused roughly $3.6 million in damages to register inmates' ostensible dissatisfaction with the newly-introduced food cost-saving measures.

More latterly, another inmate has registered his outrage that fresh milk is no longer available for his breakfast cereal, that he must make do with powdered milk, claiming that his Charter rights have been infringed. The man is a dangerous offender, locked up at Warkworth Institution in Ontario. Being forced to use powdered milk, argues 58-year-old William A. Johnson, represents cruel and unusual punishment, violating his right to "security of the person".

There is no constitutional right to fresh milk.Getty Images

This convicted sex offender, serving an indeterminate sentence and imbued with a robust sense of entitlement, filed his grievance back in January of 2015. Warkworth, he insists, unfairly denies its inmates fresh milk, bacon, and french fries, none of which appear on the National Food Menu for federal inmates. This violent sexual predator clearly has a dim awareness of his obligation within society to respect others' right to "security of the person", much less realize that the food menu is favouring his health by withholding bacon and french fries.

Much less does he quite understand the obligations of citizens to respect the social contract between civilized people that views it as a severe criminal offence to viciously harm other people. The correctional investigator speaks of food as being "foundational to health and safety" within a prison. Food of choice clearly in his estimation, viewed as a reward by society to criminals who prowl about on the lookout for opportunities to do harm to innocent people.

Food complaints evidently rank as the third most common grievance spelled out by inmates during the past three years. Over 6,000 complaints were received by the prison service about the food it has served since 2014, clearly pre-dating the introduction in 2015 of the inmate-offensive new menu. These grievances were outnumbered by complaints focusing on prison staff and outside communications.

The moral of the story: If you want personal free choice, obey the law and respect the human rights of others. The unfortunate lack of tablecloths and cloth napkins alongside well designed silverware may in the future represent a new focus of complaints. Could be if word gets out about this lamentable lack of attention to proper table settings, it might be enough to turn the criminal element toward embracing the law and becoming model citizens.

The Correctional Service of Canada provides 2,600 calories worth of food a day at a cost of $5.41 per prisoner per day. Some say it's not as tasty as it looks. (Office of the Correctional Investigator)