Asklemmy

Theoretically it can happen. In practical terms, 99% of those cases are out of three things:

• A charade to get an angry customer to go away (pretending to fire an employee)

• The last straw in a series of incidents that add up to justify firing the employee (i.e. the employee has repeatedly made a mistake with no improvement over a long period of time)

• Misconduct egregious enough to warrant firing them on the spot (for example, the employee punches a customer, or shows up to a job site blackout drunk)

The remaining 1% of cases are truly shitty managers that are a nightmare to work for.

I was fired once because I thought it was bullshit that the company’s paychecks kept bouncing, and that we had a employee in the hospital without medical insurance because the CEO didn’t pay the health insurance premiums.

Each paycheck was a race to the bank to see if yours would get cached first. If you deposited the paycheck in your bank account directly, normally no money would enter your bank account because employer didn’t have enough funds to pay everyone. I was a programer making $9 an hour.

So, this is a question with a cultural and legal element. Legally speaking, it is possible in many U.S. states to be fired for no reason -- the employer does not need to explain themselves when asked for a cause[^1]. This is to say that it's perfectly legally possible in (many) U.S. states to be fired for a reason so petty as a customer complaint -- whether or not that was the official cause notwithstanding[^2].

With that being said, employers aren't compelled to fire their own employees in response to a customer complaint. From a management perspective, it's generally very inefficient to fire someone because you'll then have to cover their hours and find/train a replacement. For that reason alone, it's already rare in most industries for truly petty firings to happen. Unfortunately, this rule of thumb gets totally flipped in low-training industries whenever there's a surplus of bodies in the labor pool. As a manager, if you're able to replace a burnt-out and/or below-average worker by the end of the week, why wouldn't you roll those dice?

Even then, it's not exactly a daily occurance even in settings where these conditions are common... with one big exception. When it comes to businesses which serve "regulars" (e.g.: hotels, restaurants, grocery stores) there exists a certain type of individual who expects that their complaints will have the power to get people fired. This variety of power-starved person tends to exclusively patronize establishments where they feel taken seriously. Such establishments deliberately choose to indulge these sleazebags because they're potential "whales" -- people who, if handled correctly, will be worth much more money than the replacement cost of the staff they cause to be fired. These firings are basically performative in nature and have nothing at all to do with something the employee could have controlled.

[^1]: Protected classes are a whole other can of worms. For the purposes of this explainer, please just trust me when I say that the legal system is still able to protect protected classes without directly requiring paperwork from the employers themselves. The system would be significantly better at this job with a papertrail requirement, but the fact that it manages to work at all when employers can basically ghost employees is something worth noting.

[^2]: Another can of worms! As you may imagine, when giving a reason is optional, it is often (but not always) legally advantageous for employers to report petty firings as no-cause firings. It's all about CYA. For example, if they're doing something dicey like racial discrimination or retaliation against union organizers, an employer might go in the opposite direction and meticulously document dozens of petty reasons in excrutiating detail. This is usually what's happening when a service-worker employee is "written up" -- that information goes in a file to be used against them if they ever sue.

It's bad management if they do that. That employee is going to file for unemployment and will probably get it, which companies have to pay a premium for. The company also has to hire and train a new employee to replace the one they sacked, costing the company even more. I know of times that sort of situation has happened, but in my experience working for various companies most managers aren't that incompetent to take every Karen's word at face value and immediately fire their staff over a random person's word about petty BS, even if they humor said Karen on the phone pretending that they will to get them to shut up