Originally Posted by
s_cianci
But that's perfectly legitimate ; if you complain about poor service, then obviously someone isn't doing his/her job properly, so if they lose the job as a result, that certainly doesn't present a potential slander/wrongful termination suit. And that's your prerogative in a free market, free enterprise system. Obviously the management saw fit to hire the employee in question even though you didn't see fit to do business with that same employee. And if the management valued the employee in question sufficiently to hire him/her in the first place, then I doubt that they're going to fret much over a little bit of lost patronage as a result. What I find questionable in this whole scenario (provided the OP is giving us all the facts, which, granted may not be the case) is that a former fellow employee from "a couple years back" comes into his/her place of business where (s)he's worked for "over a year", complains to the manager over something vague and global like "looking at me funny" and then spills all the "dirt" about OP's employment with the company in question, which is, as already mentioned, a "couple" of years old and then the manager unequivocally seems to buy into it and lays off the OP for a week, presumably without pay. Now actually, when push comes to shove, maybe the OP really can't make a case against the security guard or the company if in fact this person spoke "truthfully" to the manager about OP and maybe this is best left to the discussion board. Now I can't speak for all managers but if I had an employee working for me for "over a year" and was a reliable employee and didn't cause any problems (and that's usually true for any employee who manages to last for a year or longer) and then a customer (who's obviously not even a regular customer at that) comes in and badmouths this employee to me, I certainly wouldn't just lay him/her off for a week and leave myself shorthanded. If in fact the employee actually mistreated the customer in question (beyond just a "dirty" look) I'd give him/her a lecture and a stern warning that next time such an incident occurred the consequence would be a week off without pay. But I certainly wouldn't punish myself by leaving myself shorthanded and depriving myself of someone with over a year's experience, only to have to train someone brand new to do the job and far less efficiently at that or pay overtime to my other employees, as well as pay unemployment benefits to the worker I just canned for (at least) a week. Not to mention fears that, just as the OP is suggesting, opening myself up to potential legal repercussions. Even if exonerated in the end, the time and expenses spent to defend against a lawsuit if it came down to that just isn't cost efficient.
