Fired for not using Smiley Emojis

To quote from a report out of Australia:

A Gold Coast cafe worker was fired after her boss claimed she was being “unfriendly” by not including smiley face emojis in a text message.

Kristen Gordon has now won an unfair dismissal case in the Fair Work Commission against her former employer Sens Catering Group, which has been ordered to pay her compensation.

Gordon was employed casually at the company’s Sens cafe in Southport as a supervisor when Phoebe Wang started as manager in late 2021.

The details:

In a managerial group text message, Gordon wrote that Sens cafe needed another staff member.

She claimed Wang became “very irate and shut the conversation down”.

Gordon’s immediate boss was told by Wang to “fire her right now. Hire another supervisor. I don’t care about the cost, do it now”, the commission was told.

When Gordon asked her manager why Wang was so upset, she was told it was because she “didn’t add any smiley faces” to the messages and Wang had perceived the texts as being “unfriendly”.