My first day of employment

My first day of employment

So after landing my new job as a Wal-Mart greeter, a good find for many retirees, I lasted less than a day… About two hours into my first day on the job a very loud, unattractive, mean-acting woman walked into the store with her two kids, Yelling obscenities at them all the way through the entrance.

As I had been instructed, I said pleasantly, ‘Good morning and welcome to Wal-Mart. Nice children you have there. Are they twins?’ The ugly woman stopped yelling long enough to say, ‘Hell no, they ain’t twins. The oldest one’s 9, and the other one’s 7. Why the hell would you think they’re twins? Are you blind, or just stupid?’

So I replied, ‘I’m neither blind nor stupid, Ma’am, I just couldn’t believe someone slept with you twice. Have a good day and thank you for shopping at Wal-Mart.’

My supervisor said I probably wasn’t cut out for this line of work…

Love that one…Heard it before though with a little less “polite” language…LOL

lmao…that’s awesome.  :wink:

Glad you liked it:)

Oh my GOD… I know of her.  She was infront of me at Safeway yesterday up at the express til.  I could’ve sworn she had like 100 items too.  After she unloaded her buggy (the twins helping her), the cashier said “…And which nine items will you be paying for today?”.  I could’ve died.  Anyway, the cashier was terminated.  You might know her?

she really got shit canned? 

So the cashier was terminated, just like that??? That is hard to believe … theft or wilful damage can be grounds for immediate dismissal, but not what you have described.

If she said something like that to a customer she was maybe looking to get fired?

I highly doubt that. She may have been taken aback by the customer’s inconsiderate behaviour as Cst Ferman appears to have been, but there is something called progressive discipline, ie verbal, written, and (possibly but not necessarily) dismissal for repeated failure to comply. There are laws governing termination of an employment contract. The employer must establish just cause. Put the other way around the employee must have done something so extreme as to repudiate the contract. 

  I believe we have been “had”…Me thinks this is all a good joke, a sequel to the initial topic, maybe?      :smiley:

:smile: wow I did not clue in to that at all

Actually, within the Employment Standards Act, an employer does not require a reason to terminate an employee.  An employee can sue through the courts, not the employement Standards Branch, for wrongful dismissal but this is rarely successful; although it doesn’t hurt to seek legal council. Safeway is union though so any any legal questions or actions should be handled by the union.
bclaws.ca/Recon/document/fre … .xml#part8

Me thinks your thinks are accurate.  :smiley:

wheres the champ when you need him…

LMAO…absolutely classic! :smiley:

  Love it…Love it… We can sure get our “knickers in a knot” but then it does, as always, show how opinionated we are also…! 

It’s not quite that simple. An employer can terminate an employee at any time, but if they do so without ‘cause’ the employee has legal remedies against them. The law defines what constitutes just ‘cause’ to end an employment contract. You can walk away from any contract, but unless there was a legally acceptable reason for doing so, eg the other side failed to perform their obligations, there can be consequences.

When an employee is terminated without ‘cause’ the employee can make a claim for severance pay, which is calculated on the basis of the number of weeks or months of notice that the employer should have given the employee so that they could secure similar employment elsewhere. The calculation is dependent on the cirumstances.

An employee who has worked for the same employer for several years will usually require more notice than a short term employee. An employee doing specialized work, or a manager, may require more notice because there may not be many similar jobs. An older worker may require more notice. There are no hard and fast rules, but one ‘rule of thumb’ which a court is not bound by is one month of severance pay for every year of employment.

If the employer terminates the employment in an unfair, unreasonable or insensitive manner, eg embarrassing them in front of others (or in one case, punching them), they may be subject to additional (‘aggravated’) damages, sometimes called ‘Wallace damages’ (after a Supreme Court of Canada decision, Wallace v UGG).

The dismissed employee may sue for ‘wrongful dismissal’ under common law in the courts, or they can make an ‘unjust dismissal’ complaint under the Employment Standards Act or, if they work in an industry under federal jurisdiction (eg the port), the Canada Labour Code. If they make a complaint and an adjudicator determines that they were dismissed ‘without cause’ the damages are usually less than in a court, but the process is much faster and cheaper because a lawyer is not required. An adjudicator under the Canada Labour Code (but not provincial law) can order reinstatement as well as severance pay.

If the employee is in a union they would file a grievance, and if agreement cannot be reached between the employer and union an arbitrator may be appointed under the collective agreement to determine the matter in much the same manner as a court or a federal or provincial adjudicator. If the employee feels that the union has not adequately represented them, they may complain to the provincial or federal labour relations board (whichever applies to the industry) that the union has misrepresented them. The board may order the union to take the case through the grievance process, including to binding arbitration. 

Actually, dismissed employees are often successful before the courts, adjudicators or arbitrators; so much so that wrongful or unjust dismissal cases are overwhelmingly settled by agreement between the parties. Smarter employers who want to dismiss an employee without ‘cause’ will make them an offer that is attractive enough that they will not pursue their legal remedies.

IMO an employer would have great difficulty convincing a court, adjudicator or arbitrator (whichever has jurisdiction) that an employee was dismissed for ‘cause’ for asking a customer “which nine items will you be paying for today”.

Safeway’s express lane has a 15-item limit, doesn’t it?

This is a joke already.  Nobody was fired.

People should use emoticons to indicate humour.

If this is a joke, then it is a bad joke. Cst Ferman, please deploy your emoticon device in future.

Umm, Ferman admitted it was a joke a few posts back.