Some company rules should be illegal.

This retail employee worked late on a night shift and went straight home to sleep. But his manager changed his afternoon shift to the early morning shift at 4 AM. He was fired the next day for not showing up at 6 AM.

Read the full story below.

Got fired for not sensing a schedule change in my sleep.

I work(ed) for a supermarket of regional existence. I worked in the meat department, one of the few supermarket chains to still have on-location butchers, as far as I’m aware.

I work the closing shift, from 2-11 usually, which involves cleaning down the whole cutting room and all of the display cases. Naturally, depending on the workload that day, some days it takes longer to clean than others.

Being that we’re going to have nice weather this weekend and next week (check local listings), we were pretty busy and didn’t get to start closing until later than normal. By the time we got everything done, I didn’t clock out until 12:20.

I came into work today for my shift, and I was having trouble clocking in. I went back and asked one of the store managers if the system was down, she told me no and looked at my information.

She told me that I was automatically terminated by the computer today after a no call/no show this morning.

This employee was furious when they fired him for not showing up.

That was weird, I wasn’t scheduled to work this morning, I thought, but she said it was in the system that I was supposed to work 6-2 today, which is the opening shift.

I went back to ask my manager what happened, and he said he’d changed my schedule a little after he got in at 4 am, because someone had called in and he needed someone to cover.

He said he’d tried to call me to tell me, but I didn’t answer. (Obviously, I didn’t answer, I was asleep after the last shift.)

Naturally, I was fuming and asked how I was supposed to work an opening shift right after a closing one, and all I got was some nonsense that “It’s company policy that in order to be full-time, you have to have open availability. Your schedules are available online. It’s your responsibility to watch for changes.”

It was probably illegal what happened (or maybe not, thanks to at-will employment), but at this point, I don’t care. I wouldn’t go back if I could. Forget them and forget him specifically.

Some employers treat their employees like slaves.

Other people in the comments are sounding off.

Ridiculous!, says this one.

Here’s a valid point.

Some useful advice.

This one is chiming in.

And another sensible suggestion.

Retail employees need to sleep, too; they’re not robots.

If you liked this post, check out this story about an employee who got revenge on a co-worker who kept grading their work suspiciously low.