Friday, May 09, 2008

File this under "non news"

This was the news story all over Toronto yesterday where a woman was fired for giving a timbit [little ball of doughnut] to a baby. I hated it because all the stories emphasized that the employee was 'a single mother' [what? like it doesn't matter if the rest of us have jobs?] and that the food she gave away was 'for a baby'. How is her job loss NATIONAL news? I do think that the manager was probably over zealous in firing her but maybe the employee was generally a crap employee and the manager had been waiting for an excuse to get rid of her. Also, I don't respect the fact that the employee went to the media.

I'm sure all of us have in some way cheated our employer - printing personal documents from work, or finding a pen at home - and I don't think they are firing offences. But this is a restaurant. I loathe Tims, but to me if I saw an employee handing out free food I would worry they were doing it all the time. I just think there's probably more to the story than this little media sob story.

Tim Hortons rehires fired woman

Globe and Mail Update with Canadian Press

LONDON, Ont. — A Tim Hortons employee fired Wednesday for giving a free Timbit to the child of a regular customer has been rehired.

Nicole Lilliman, 27, a single mother of four in London, Ont., was reinstated Thursday after intervention by the chain's head office.

In a terse press release, the company blamed an overzealous manager for the firing, which threatened to become a public relations nightmare as the story gained traction in the media Thursday.

"Unfortunately the action of the manager of this location was not appropriate nor grounds for dismissal. With an apology from management, Ms. Lilliman has been rehired by the franchisee," it states.

5 comments:

tornwordo said...

It was the second story on the national news last night. I couldn't believe it. And I had the same suspicions as you. We'll never hear the full story, Tim's went into immediate damage control.

katrocket said...

OMG Snooze and Torn - I thought I was the only one who thought this story was total BS. Must have been a slow news day.

I don't care if she is a single mom - perhaps she should have thought about her actions, or paid for the customer's food herself, if keeping her job was a freakin' priority in her life. I'm quite certain that "giving away stuff" isn't in the employee handbook. And playing the baby card? Oh please. Babies can stuff it.

My friends all think I'm heartless to hold this opinion. Maybe they were just referring to the baby part?

Susan as Herself said...

Thts is extremely odd to me that it was on the national news... I don't get it.

All I can say is, if giving stuff away is a firing offence, i should have benn fired a million times over when I worked at Starbucks. I used to give people free coffee all the time---if they had a long wait, if they were purhasing a ton of retail items (as a bonus while everything was being packed up), and hell---if I knew them.

I think I gave my friends a years's supply of free coffee in the two years I worked there. NOTE: I never gave coffee to a baby. Phew.

Nicki said...

That does it. I'm never moving to Canada now. You guys are just too hard on the working stiff. I mean, I don't have KIDS, but I have CATS, and that should count for something, right? RIGHT?!?!?!?

Snooze said...

Torn: The more I read about her, the more suspicious I get, but you're right, we'll never know the real story but as one commenter on the cbc site noted, three managers do not meet all together to fire an employee over giving away a timbit.

Kat: I thought the same as you - she could have coughed up the 20 cents if she had such a good heart.

Susan: I get free coffee at Starbucks all the time, but I have never been given food. However, I think it's more in this case that many of us believe the timbit wasn't the reason she was fired. It was more an excuse. The fact her first move was to go to the media and play the "I have four kids" bit instead of contacting the labour relations board, makes me think that something else was going on

Heiden...: Don't worry, in canada you can apparently skip all labour processes and just go to the media if you aren't happy with your boss.