Safeway Suspends Worker For Sci-Fi Parody of His Firing 191
theodp writes "After making light of a bad situation — Safeway's closing of its Chicagoland Dominick's grocery store chain and termination of 6,000 workers — with a satirical SciFi YouTube clip, Dominick's employee Steve Yamamoto found himself suspended just one day before the grocery chain closed up shop for good. 'My store manager got a phone call that she had to suspend me,' Yamamoto told NBC Chicago. 'I was like, "Are you serious?" It's crazy as it is. I'm just dumbfounded.' Perhaps Safeway was concerned that viewers of Yamamoto's video might think that aliens, robots, and monsters did Dominick's in, although the Chicago Tribune suggests financial machinations as a more likely culprit: 'By pulling the plug on Chicago [Dominick's], Safeway could not only satisfy [hedge fund] Jana, but also generate a $400 million to $450 million tax benefit.'"
Re:So how serious is this (Score:5, Informative)
CBS Chicago [cbslocal.com]: "The move could prevent Yamamoto from getting about three weeks' severance pay, he says."
Re:How dare they (Score:5, Informative)
AC, I know you were being facetious, but it did seem a bit petty to suspend the employee the day before he was to be laid off anyway, didn't it?
It's not like they could suspend him after they let him go. Get real.
But by suspending him the day before he was laid off, they CAN fuck with his unemployment benefits in most states. Illinois is NOT a 'right to work' state, so I don't know what the procedure is. In Arizona, which IS a right to work state, you get suspended or fired, you DO have difficulty getting unemployment, especially if your former employer doesn't bother to answer the state's questions about the circumstances of your dismissal. THAT one got pulled on me, and I got screwed outta my unemployment until my 6 months of 'regular' unemployment expired and I then qualified for the 13 week extension.
Banned Cameras (Score:5, Informative)
This is the same company that had upper management trying to ban cameras in the bakery department lest their cakes appear on Cake Wrecks. They tried to argue that their cakes are copyrighted and thus taking photos of them is copyright infringement. http://www.cakewrecks.com/home/2012/11/9/ways-to-play-it-safe.html