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.'"
Open mouth, insert lawyers (Score:4, Interesting)
Had Safeway just ignored the video and let this guy go with the other 5999, we'd probably have never even heard of it except maybe as some footnote in a local broadcaster's "Quick! We've got 20 seconds to fill, what can we do with it?" at the end of the 11pm news. Instead, by firing him like this, they've likely opened themselves up to a wrongful termination/retaliation lawsuit.
Google at fault? (Score:5, Interesting)
I wonder if Safeway would have learned of the identity for the poster had Google not coerced "Steve Yamamoto" to post non-anonymously in some flawed attempt to elevate the failed status of Google+.
Re:Slow news day (Score:4, Interesting)
I wouldn't be so quick to dismiss this...
1. Even losing $50 to someone with no work lined up could be a pretty big deal.
2. It's hard to tell but depending on how he was suspended it could hinder his ability to collect unemployment,
He dared to criticize the overlords (Score:4, Interesting)
It wasn't enough to merely fire him and his 5999 coworkers. They made an example out of him.
That's power.