Company Fires Employee Because She Takes 10 Minutes To Reply To Emails & They Regret It Immediately

Dec 02, 2021

Starting a new job can be stressful, but the situation can go from bad to worse if you aren't able to communicate with your boss or if there are unreasonable expectations. One woman experienced both of these issues at her former place of work and was even fired for taking just 10 minutes to respond to emails. However, in the end, she got the last word, and the company suffered for their mistake.  

The woman shared her work horror story on the Reddit forum r/malicious compliance. She began by explaining that from the very first day, the job was challenging. There was hardly any training, and she had a really difficult time communicating her questions to her boss due to a language barrier. Nevertheless, the woman continued on and did the best she could. 

Things seemed to be going okay until, out of the blue, she was told she was fired, and it was effective immediately. The woman was shocked as there had been no prior warnings or discussions over any issues that might have been happening. When she asked human resources why she was being fired, they claimed she took too long to answer emails. Surprised by this, the woman looked up her response time and found it was under 10 minutes. 

The job the woman was fired from was to coordinate guest speakers for large conferences. After she was fired, her former employer tried to reach out and get information on where the woman left off with coordinating a speaker for an upcoming event. The woman did not want to help the company that just fired her, so she used a clause in her contract to get out of sharing any information. Keep reading to learn what she did to make the company regret firing her.  

The job wasn't easy, to begin with, but the woman tried to remain positive. She wrote on Reddit:

"From day one, it was a nightmare. There was zero onboarding or training. I was simply given the log-in info for a couple of different websites and told to get to work. I was the only person in this role. The information solely resided with me. Not a big deal, I say to myself. I'm good at thinking on my feet. I'll just ask questions when I need clarification on something."

She continued, "That turned out to be impossible. My manager's first language wasn't English. I'm all for learning new languages. I think it's a great skill to have and it takes a lot of work and being able to speak multiple languages is impressive. The problem was that her English was so poor that it was often very hard to understand what she was trying to say."

The woman did her best, but the company still fired her without warning. "Regardless, I did my best in the position. Small mistakes happened here and there but overall all the speakers were very happy and felt well supported. I struggled with communication with my manager, but I thought the company was happy with my work. Until 4 months in when I was randomly pulled into a meeting with my manager, HR, and legal. Effective immediately I was fired," she said. 

When the company tried to get her help with their current conference, she refused and claimed:

"As per my NDA, I am not to discuss intimate details or share documents relating to this position with any employer- past or future. Since this firing was effective immediately, you are now a former employer and I am bound by my NDA."

The company tried to push back but was forced to let it go when their own legal team backed up the woman. She shared: "HR turned to Legal and Legal pointed out that I was technically correct. They were a former employer and I was bound by my NDA. They fired me 17 days before the event. They didn't have time to start over from scratch ... apparently, my manager nearly lost her job because of it."

Commenters cheered the woman on for getting back at the company. One person pointed out: "Even without the NDA, if I were fired 'effective immediately' that means my job no longer is paying me to answer such questions so I have zero obligation to answer them. You fired me and now you want me to finish doing my job for free?!"

Another user asked, "Is the email response time documented somewhere or is that just an arbitrary reason? You might be able to sue, but then again, not worth the time and energy."

The woman responded, saying, "When I pressed them on it and asked for documentation (because I had proof that nearly every email sent during business hours got a response in under 10 minutes), they said proof didn't matter and I was being fired no matter what."

She added, "The language barrier between me and my manager led to a lot of miscommunication and lots of 'can you clarify what you mean?' response emails. I think she just got annoyed and thought I was being intentionally dumb."

What would you have done in this situation? Have you ever had a terrible job experience like this? Let us know, and feel free to pass this along to your friends and family.