US man says he was fired over Slack after a confrontation with his manager about remote work – Business Insider South Africa

10 Aug
A man in Austin, Texas, said he was fired over Slack after a confrontation with his boss over a decision to work remotely. 
“It was pretty common for employees to do spontaneous things like nobody ever asked to have to go to the doctor, or like work from home,” Chad Hampton, 29, told Insider. 
Hampton, who opened up about his termination in a TikTok, which has amassed over 200,000 views, said he was fired from his administrative position as a marketing associate after messaging his manager before work that he was working from home to focus on his duties on that day.
Hampton said his manager “got upset with the way that I spoke to her” after saying he was working from home on July 29.
According to Hampton, many of the employees at the company worked remotely or from home. 
“There’s maybe 15 employees altogether, mostly remote, on an average day there’s maybe five people in the office” he claimed.
Hampton messaged his manager on Slack at 8:14 am that he was going to work from home to focus on his task of making calls without distractions from the office, according to screenshots reviewed by Insider. His manager responded about an hour later in apparent confusion.
“What’s going on? Why aren’t you here?” the manager wrote in her reply on Slack. 
Hampton replied that he could get through his work “if I don’t have distractions.”
When asked what was distracting in the office, Hampton replied, “Do you have an issue with me working from home today?”
The manager, according to the Slack messages, said she did not have an issue with Hampton working from home if he “didn’t feel the best,” but remote work due to supposed distractions “is another topic.”
Hampton said he was under the impression that employees were allowed to work remotely so long as the work was done. He said he attempted to call his manager to clarify the issue, but his calls went unanswered as his manager messaged him on Slack. 
In his last message, Hampton responded that he would continue to work from home, which is about 30 minutes from the office, and offered to have a conversation a few days later in person. 
He added that the impression he got from his manager and the company’s leadership during the four months he’d worked there was, “I don’t care if you work from home as long as the work is done, but it’s primarily done on site.”
“If there needs to be a reassessment of what has been said to me since starting then it can happen in person on Monday. Otherwise unless the quality of my work is lackluster I don’t see the problem,” Hampton wrote.
After completing the work calls he set out to make from home, Hampton said he received a message at around 11 am from the company’s owner telling him he was terminated and that he showed “tremendous disrespect” to his manager. 
Hampton said he immediately attempted to call his manager and the owner to clarify that his intentions were not to be disrespectful but couldn’t reach them. 
A few hours later, Hampton said the owner called him back, noting that she didn’t mean to ignore his calls. 
Hampton told Insider that during his call with the owner, he attempted to clarify that his intentions were not to disrespect his manager over Slack. She told him his job was terminated, Hampton said. 
At 1 pm, he said he went to work to gather his belongings.
Hampton, who said he was never fired before, was embarrassed. He called his mom after picking up his belongings to tell her what happened, and she reassured him that the company’s response was “a bit much.”
“The next day is when I made the TikTok because I was just like, “Man, getting fired on Slack is the cheapest, weakest way you could fire somebody. I sat there in your office, supporting you for months,” Hampton said.
Since the start of the pandemic, workers and employers have debated whether or not working from home, is just as effective as working in person. While many remote workers argue that working from home is just as effective as working in person in an office, companies like Amazon and Google are trying to bring workers back to the office. 
According to recent data from Pew Research, 59% of US workers who say their jobs can mainly be done from home are working from home all or most of the time. However, in a recent report from Microsoft, 50% of leaders said they either require or will require employees to work in person in the coming year.  
Leaders of large companies, such as Tesla’s Elon Musk, have been vocal about having their workers return back to the office; however, experts have said that remote work during the pandemic did not damage worker productivity. 
Despite being out of a job, Hampton said he was relieved to no longer work for his previous company.
“After I thought about it, more like I’m cool with it because, obviously, I don’t wanna be around people that can’t have a 1) a conversation over the phone and 2) fire people on Slack,” Hampton said.”
In response to the termination incident, Hampton designed merchandise inspired by his experience  that included t-shirts that read “tremendously disrespectful” and “I said, cut me some slack, not fire me on slack.”
“I just started getting creative,” he said. “I started working on my little portfolio and just kind of reclaiming all the nasty things that were said to me.”
10 Aug

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