Even though there was no policy against it, these workers were allegedly fired simply for wearing orange. And the company was well within its rights to do it.
We first saw the story about a group of employees who claim they were fired for wearing orange shirts at work in the Sun Sentinel, a Florida newspaper.
Apparently, the workers had been wearing orange on payday Fridays for several months because it helped them be identified as a group at Happy Hours.
On this particular Friday, 14 total employees came in with orange shirts, which allegedly set off some sort of a red flag with one of the firm’s execs.
According to the story in the Sun Sentinel, all of the orange-clad workers were corralled into a conference room where the exec allegedly said, “he understood there was a protest involving orange, the employees were wearing orange, and they all were fired.”
The fired workers claim he then said that anyone who was wearing orange for an innocent reason should speak up. When one worker tried to explain the orange wasn’t about a protest, but a happy hour, the exec left to confer with other upper managers. When he returned, he said the initial decision stood and the entire group was fired.
So is this the really the end of the line? Probably. Florida is an “at-will” state and employers don’t have to explain the reasons why they terminated employees.
