Straight out of the Ebeneezer Scrooge Department

November 24, 2001 8:00 PM

Straight out of the Ebeneezer Scrooge Department comes this beauty of a tale. Well, you know, it's that time of year again. Anybody have a tale to match or top this one?
posted by MAYORBOB (17 comments total)

Wow. That is terrible, and fireing her dosn't make any sense... how could the woman possibly choose not to help her mother, and it's not like she's going to be giving another kidny or something.

The best quote was this though: "she asked why she previously had been granted the leave, she was told: 'That was July. This is the Christmas season'"
posted by delmoi at 8:24 PM on November 24, 2001

Bah. Humbug.

Won't be shopping there.
posted by SpecialK at 8:59 PM on November 24, 2001

(BTW, this is close to home for me. I used to work at the website that the story is from.)
posted by SpecialK at 8:59 PM on November 24, 2001

I will never understand why it makes sense to fire somebody because if they got time off, the company would be understaffed.

It's like being suspended from school. It boggles my mind.
posted by kevspace at 9:01 PM on November 24, 2001

Let's hope that someone with the means sees this story and takes it upon themselves to ease this family's financial burden just a bit.
posted by Optamystic at 9:13 PM on November 24, 2001

It had nothing to do with me taking time off, but I was fired the day I came back to work after my father's funeral. I knew it was coming, but the timing couldn't have been worse. It just makes me a hundred times gladder that I don't work there anymore.

It sounds like this woman's employer was way too concerned with playing by the rules and not concerned enough with keeping a good employee.
posted by bendy at 12:33 AM on November 25, 2001

My brother worked for a company once who handed out the pink slips at the office Xmas party. Merry Fucking Christmas. Ho, ho, ho.
posted by MAYORBOB at 5:19 AM on November 25, 2001

There's no story at the link now. Anyone have another link?
posted by Qubit at 5:26 AM on November 25, 2001

I can't see it now either. I tire of websites which don't use static links. I don't generally return to websites that use dynamic, changing links. If I save the URL, and later return to find it no longer pointing to what I wanted, I just delete it and move on. It's not in their better interests.
posted by ZachsMind at 5:33 AM on November 25, 2001

Sorry. When I posted this, it was a good 36 hours after I stumbled across the story and the link worked. OregonLive.com's search function is kerphlooey also.

It was a great (read incredible) story about how this woman had gotten approval to donate a kidney to her mom back in July, but the operation was postponed. When she donated the kidney in October, she was informed that she was canned. Reasons given included, "that was Summer, this is the holiday season" and some mumbo jumbo about not wanting to set a bad precedent that other employees would take advantage of (I didn't realize there were that many relatives of kidney disease victims working at Christopher & Bank).
posted by MAYORBOB at 5:45 AM on November 25, 2001

There was this person I thought was a good person, offered me a great "Ebeneezer Scrooge" like story. It wasn't there. What a terrible, terrible disappointment. :(
posted by DBAPaul at 6:04 AM on November 25, 2001

She saves mom, gets fired for it. Seattle Post-Intelligencer story.
posted by Carol Anne at 6:28 AM on November 25, 2001

this is just inhumane. i visited Christopher & Bank website so i could email them my opinion of this.......

i noticed on their home page.......

"As Americans we must stand tall in the face of adversity.
Please continue to support the American Red Cross."

i hope i'm not the only mefi to complain to C&B
posted by quarsan at 8:18 AM on November 25, 2001

I love their employment opportunities page which touts flexible schedules and a great team atmosphere.

Let's tell 'em what we think!

Perhaps CEO William Prange, who made $11.3 million this year, could help the Bevilacquas out.
posted by Geo at 2:05 PM on November 25, 2001

In MY city, a teacher was able to donate a kidney to a pupil(during the school year, I might add) and the whole school rallied around her-as did the media(feelgood story of the year, plus the teacher and child were of different races).........

I mentioned that, among other things, when I left MY little message to C&B......

Merry Christmas.......
posted by bunnyfire at 2:21 PM on November 25, 2001

My wife was a manager for Christopher and Banks until about a month ago. She left due to understaffing and mismanagement. This story just runs true to form for the company.
posted by jkilg at 2:57 PM on November 26, 2001

"Well of course. Can't set a precedent here, otherwise all of our staff will start donating kidneys left, right and center, and then where will we be? Populated by a zombie mob of kidneyless bleeding hearts, that's where, with hordes of compassionate store assistants asking customers 'Would you like a kidney with that?' Soon Christopher & Banks would be better known for its kidney donations than for its fine range of winter apparel, and before you know it all of our efforts to maintain our carefully-built image of bland shopping-mall clothing retailer would be for nothing. Some people just don't think."
posted by rory at 2:26 AM on November 27, 2001