Facepalm moment: Employee in China fired for using emoji to reply her boss

KUALA LUMPUR, June 20 — Sometimes, emojis speak better than words.

Not in this case, where an employee at a bar in Changsha, central China, was fired by the bar manager after replying with an OK emoji to his message on instant messaging app WeChat, according to online news reports.

The manager tagged the employee in a message in the bar’s WeChat group last week, asking her to send over meeting documents and made a big deal out of her response, reported Chinese media platform, Btime.

“You should use text to reply that you have received the message, don’t you know the rules?” wrote the manager, it was reported.

Minutes later, the employee was told to contact human resources, so that she could sort out her resignation.

“This is real, and my resignation is still being processed.

“I have worked for many years and this is my first encounter with this kind of stupid situation,” said the employee.

She was not the only one in the WeChat group who felt that their boss’ conduct was "stupid" as her colleagues also felt that he had gone too far.

After that, her colleagues also revealed that their boss sent out an official announcement for all employees to use “Roger” when replying to messages in the group.

Screenshots from the conversation got a lot of attention on Chinese microblogging site Weibo, with over 280 million views and reactions from other social media users extending their support for the employee.

“Any reason is valid if your boss wants to fire you,” wrote a user, while others said that they would not have even bothered to reply to such a ridiculous message.

This isn’t the first time that Chinese employees have been chided by their bosses for the way they reply to text messages.

Earlier this month, another employee was berated by their boss for “lacking basic WeChat manners” by replying “Um” in Chinese, which means ‘noted’, reported regional Chinese newspaper, Chongqing Chen Bao.

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