A single mother and real estate agent from East Texas, Kristin McCarley, was left in a state of shock after she claims her boss fired her via a late-night text message that she described as “drunk.” McCarley shared the bizarre account in a video posted on TikTok, which quickly went viral.
The Unprofessional Termination
The incident unfolded on Saturday night when McCarley received the first text at 10:36 pm. The message was initially cryptic, reading, “Do not come in Monday.” It then continued with grammatically confused statements before delivering the final blow: “I’ve mage (sic) changes to the office. I have to let you go.”
However, the strange exchange did not end there. McCarley claimed that she received a second, even more bizarre message from her boss hours later, at 1:07 am. This time, the East Texan said, the boss simply sent a screenshot of a personal picture from her social media account, which showed McCarley and a friend smiling, with absolutely no text explanation.
Social Media Calls for Legal Action
McCarley’s video prompted an immediate and widespread reaction on social media, with many users expressing outrage over the unprofessional conduct and encouraging her to seek legal counsel or report the issue to the company’s Human Resources department.
- Users were quick to point out the potentially illegal nature of the firing, with one individual commenting, “What???? OMG! Getting fired over a drunk text. This can’t be legal.”
- Another commenter suggested a positive outcome for McCarley, writing, “You about to get a Christmas blessing in the form of a lawsuit.”
- Other responses highlighted the absurdity of the situation: “I thought he was giving you a day off,” and simply, “That’s so insanely unprofessional.”
Expert Analysis: The Rise of ‘Avoidant Communication’
Workplace expert Roxanne Calder weighed in on the matter, telling news.com.au that firing someone over text is deeply “impersonal” and points to a worrying cultural shift in workplace management.
Calder explained that this behavior is rooted in what psychologists term avoidant communication, where managers prioritize the fear of confrontation over their professional duty and responsibility.
She added that this impersonal distance has become normalized since the pandemic: “Managers are probably treating a termination in the way they treat any other task, you send a message and that’s ticked (off), done, when in actual fact that’s a human we’re dealing with and it’s their livelihood, not to mention all the other emotional and psychological factors that come into play when people lose their job.”