Legal Brief for February, 2022

Trash Talking Your Employeer Is Never A Good Idea

Some cases fall squarely into the category of "what were they thinking?"  A recent case from British Columbia of a trash talking ex-employee is a prime example of the old maxim - think before you speak.

A 39 year old UPS driver in Kelowna with 12 years of service was making a delivery one afternoon to a retail establishment.  While making the delivery the store clerk asked the driver to take another package back to UPS for a return.  The driver refused to take the package.  The store clerk, who was female and roughly 60 years old, went out to the driver's truck and placed the package in his truck.  The driver took it out and dropped it on the ground.  The lady approached the driver to pick up the package to put it back on the truck.  The driver pushed her away, she took a swing at him and he punched her in the face.

Not surprisingly the driver was fired by UPS immediately once his superiors became aware of the situation.  The driver then filed a grievance protesting the dismissal.  During the grievance hearing the driver professed to be very remorseful about what had happened with the clerk at the store, and he promised to "turn things around".  Management decided that given his long service record that he was worth taking a second chance on, and they offered to convert the termination of his employment into a one month suspension and to let him have his job back.  The driver readily agreed.

Subsequent to the grievance hearing some text messages that the driver had sent to former colleagues during the time after his employment had initially been terminated came to light (i.e. they were apparently leaked to UPS by the recipients of the texts).  One of them was "F... UPS".  Another was "UPS is toxic".  ” Upon learning of these texts, UPS decided that it had been duped at the grievance hearing and it retracted the offer of re-employment.  The driver then filed a further grievance protesting this retraction.  He was certainly persistent, albeit perhaps delusional.

The arbitrator on his further grievance ruled that the text messages constituted admissible evidence as to whether in fact the driver was remorseful as he had said he was at the initial grievance hearing.  The arbitrator decided that the driver had been deliberately dishonest during that hearing when he had said that he regretted his actions.  As a result the arbitrator ruled that UPS was justified in retracting the return to work offer to the driver

The moral of this story - what you say can, and will (depending on the circumstances) be used against you.