A bartender claims she received a message informing her she had been fired as she couldn’t work weekends.
Melbourne-based TikTok creator Ella Vivian posted a video on April 2, explaining to her followers why she had been sacked from her bartending job.
‘It was early March when I got the message, and I was literally sitting on the toilet, and I had a shift scheduled for the next day,’ she said.
‘I never usually worked weekends [and] during my interview with my boss, he said that it’s fine.’
She said her manager was told to take her off the weekly roster by the owner because she ‘can’t work weekends’.
‘Apparently, the reason for this was there was a really big function that weekend, and the owner, he wanted every single worker to be coming to this event and because I couldn’t, he was just like, “Fire”.’
She also said she had experienced a ‘weird’ moment while still employed at her job.
‘I was told, prior to being fired, that all the girls needed to start working weekends more because we were better to look at for the customers,’ Ms Vivian said.
‘This was my first instance of looking at the work and being like, “This is kind of weird”,’ she said.
‘But I was like, “Whatever,” because, to be fair, me and the other girls at the place didn’t really work weekends very often.’
Ms Vivian has not named the bar in question. Daily Mail Australia contacted her for comment.
The content creator, who said she usually worked Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays and is believed to have been a casual employee, claimed she wasn’t asked to come into work for the weekend shift.
‘If they had messaged me and been like, “Can you please work this Saturday? We kind of need all the workers,” I would have been like, “Yeah”.’
‘I wouldn’t have wanted to, but I probably would have.’
She also said she would have been open to working more weekends, but didn’t receive any warnings.
The TikTok video has split Australians over whether it was fair to fire Ms Vivian.
‘As an ex hospo manager I’m like “Welp, can’t work weekends? I don’t need you dawg”. That’s our busiest time of the week,’ one user said.
Another said: ‘Hospitality is based on weekends. If you can’t do it, get out of hospitality.’
But others jumped to the defence of the content creator.
‘You realise causal workers aren’t obligated to work any hours they don’t want/can’t??’ one person said, responding to a critical comment.
Another said: ‘They definitely went about it the wrong way and should’ve approached you in a formal matter about it seeing as you went into this job having stated your availability!’
Samantha Maddern, a partner in workplace relations at firm Mills Oakley, told Daily Mail Australia a contract will set out terms of when an employee can work.
‘If on a casual contract, you would normally have an understanding with the employer,’ she said.
‘If you are a good employer, it is meant to be a give-and-take situation but sometimes, like in this situation maybe, it is not working out.’