Internet reacts to viral job dismissal: “OMG! Getting fired over a drunk text. This can’t be legal”
In a viral TikTok post, a woman shared alleged details of a bizarre job dismissal, eliciting hundreds of replies from outraged social-media users.
Kristin McCarley, the woman behind a viral TikTok claim that she was fired by a late-night “drunk text”, has returned to the video-sharing platform with more details on her very public employment predicament.
“I love my brokerage”
McCarley has posted a new video in which she denies news reports that her alleged dismissal came at the hands of an employer in the real-estate sector. She appears to work for a realty brokerage in Paris, a city in northeastern Texas.
“Yes, I did get fired; no, it was not from my real-estate brokerage,” said McCarley, who did not specify the nature of the additional employment that she says she has now lost.
“I love my brokerage,” she added, declaring: “I hope I still have a job there after this!”
“I was employed by somebody else”
McCarley, who describes herself on her TikTok profile as a “single mom of 2 boys”, continued: “I needed something more stable, so I was employed by somebody else and I worked there for a little over a year. And the text message that was seen happened last weekend.
“I posted it as comedic relief on my end, because I use comedy as a trauma response. Always have, probably always will.”
What did McCarley’s text-firing say?
In a widely-viewed original post, McCarley had shared a screenshot of a text message, allegedly from her manager, alongside the caption: “Sometimes you just have to read your boss’s drunk text at 10:36pm on a Saturday night and move on.”
The purported firing-by-text read: “Do not come in Monday. I’ve mage [sic] changes to the office. I have to let you go.”
McCarley also claimed that the unnamed boss “then sent me another text at 1:07am with a snapshot of a fb [Facebook] post of me and my friends smiling for a photo”.
McCarley’s initial TikTok post, which has so far accrued 1.7 million views, has elicited hundreds of comments - many of which have urged her to take legal action over her alleged dismissal.
“What???? OMG!” wrote one commenter. “Getting fired over a drunk text. This can’t be legal.” Another TikToker declared, “Yeah, I’d be calling a lawyer real fast,” while a further user said simply: “Congrats on the lawsuit money.”
“I don’t think people are intending to be unprofessional or cruel”
Speaking to News.com.au, the employment expert Roxanne Calder appeared to stop short of supporting claims that McCarley’s alleged firing carried grounds for legal action, but criticized the “impersonal nature” of the communication.
“Technology I think has become a bit of a shield - I don’t think people are intending to be unprofessional or cruel,” Calder said. “We’re seeing what psychologists call avoidant communication, where the fear of confrontation overrides our professional responsibility and duty.”
Calder continued: “Managers are probably treating a termination in the way they treat any other task, you send a message and that’s ticked [off], done, when in actual fact that’s a human we’re dealing with and it’s their livelihood, not to mention all the other emotional and psychological factors that come into play when people lose their job.”
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