‘Outrageous’: Wild text boss sends to staffer after they were fired

A boss is going viral over a demand made to a former worker that was fired causing the ex-staffer to ask, “are you joking?”

A boss is going viral for making a wild request from a recently fired worker.

UK workplace expert Ben Askins routinely goes viral for sharing anonymous text message exchanges between workers and their managers.

Mr Askins recently shared a wild exchange in which a boss messaged an employee who had recently been fired and asked for their help with a new software.

The boss brazenly texted the former employee and said, “I need to ask a favour”, and then explained the team were struggling with the latest software update and needed their help sorting it out.

“Are you joking? You fired me and now you’re asking for help,” the ex-staffer fired back.

The boss responded and said that they “appreciated it was awkward,” but the team to which they’d outsourced the software issue to was unable to fix the problem.

The ex-employee wrote back, “I told you this would happen,” and the ex-boss replied again and asked if the former worker would “walk” the new team through it remotely.

The text exchange went viral. Picture:

The ex-staffer replied and said they’d do it, but they wanted to be paid for the help and “half a day’s pay” for their time.

The former boss wasn’t happy and argued it would take less than an hour, so they shouldn’t have to pay the ex-worker for longer.

“We worked together for a long time. Can’t you just do this for me?” The former boss asked.

Mr Askins was not impressed by the exchange and said the whole conversation could have been “avoided” if a valuable employee had not been fired.

“What are you doing firing the only person that can do the work?” He asked.

Mr Askins said that it was “outrageous” to try to “weasel” out of paying the ex-staffer for their work, and it simply shouldn’t have happened.

Ben Askins couldn't believe the boss. Picture: TikTok/BenAskins

He called the request outrageous. Picture: TikTok/BenAskins

The workplace expert said the text exchange also highlighted the general tendency of workplaces to over-rely on a few team members.

Mr Askins argued that more people should be trained to handle things so people aren’t getting “bothered” especially when they’ve just been fired.

Online people were pretty ominously shocked the boss would ask for help from an employee who had just lost their job.

“Unbelievable,” one wrote.

“When jobs have nothing they have the audacity,” someone joked.

“Their number would have been blocked when I was fired,” another shared.

Someone else said the same exact thing happened to them, and their former workplace wouldn’t “leave them alone” after firing them.

“Been there. Made redundant and they wanted me to train my replacement. I said no,” one shared.

Someone else claimed the wildest thing about the exchange was the ex-staffer only asking for half a day’s pay, deeming it “crazy” not to demand more.

Originally published as ‘Outrageous’: Wild text boss sends to staffer after they were fired