Employee fired after winning office costume contest and denied promised cash prize. AITA? + UPDATE and PHOTO
"Fired and denied prize after winning work costume contest."
I work in a large office setting in Alabama. It's not a call center but has a similar environment. Officially, there isn't a uniform and you can wear whatever as long as it isn't against the dress code.
But several of my managers are religious and very "southern judgey" ladies who harass certain people in the office over the way they look, either with inappropriate unwanted compliments or overly judgmental comments. I'm a very tall guy who works out and I've gotten both sides of it (the latter because I have very long hair and they call me a hippie).
I know a lot of female coworkers who've gotten much worse because of VERY conservative clothing, and in the time I've worked here I've seen multiple complaints to the HR about comments made to them which have ended in them being fired in the next week.
Being harassed over clothing/body stuff is a big topic among my coworkers and it has made for a terrible office environment. On the glassdoor for our company 75% of the reviews specifically reference this aspect of working here.
A few days prior to the 31st, I found out my work was doing a costume contest. I had a somewhat high effort costume I was reusing from a comic convention, and I decided to wear it again, not really expecting to win. My workplace has over 100 employees and the top prize for winning included $500 in cash and several gift cards.
It is worth noting that the costume is not in any way sexual or inappropriate for work, or more specifically from our dress code. If you are curious, the character I dressed up as was Gonta Gokuhara.
If you google him nothing is inappropriate about his design/against our dress code save for being barefoot, and I broke character for that by wearing sandals. The most inappropriate thing I can think of is that there were fake bug toys in the bug box.
Virtually no one is our office dressed up, which I wasn't expecting but it made sense. It was me, one new girl who wore a kitty ear headband and a set of cheap fairy wings, and several of my female managers, all of whom went all out.
Everyone in my office has strong resentment for our managers for reasons mentioned above and I ended up winning the vote because of it. (The headband girl won 2nd).
I was told that I'd be sent my prize via direct deposit yesterday. I did not, and instead got an email explaining that I was being terminated for abuse of the office dress code. When I called my manager for clarification, she said that my costume clearly violated dress code.
After I asked what rule it was that I broke she told me that "I knew what it was" and was hung up on. I'm young and I've honestly never dealt with a level of blatant unprofessionalism in the workplace on this level before and I really don't know what to do. Do I have rights on this? They can't seriously do that right?
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's initial post:
It is shitty and unfair. Unfortunately, shitty and unfair is legal. They can fire you for not following the dress code, and they can fire you for following the dress code. The $500 prize is yours, and they need to pay up. You should also be eligible for unemployment since this is not actually a for cause termination as far as unemployment is concerned.
I'm betting that the real reason you were fired was that the judgey managers were intending for one of them to get the prize, & weren't expecting any of you peons to try for it. I also wouldn't be surprised if the reason that hardly any of the other peons dressed up was because they suspected that it was a setup.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's initial post:
It is shitty and unfair. Unfortunately, shitty and unfair is legal. They can fire you for not following the dress code, and they can fire you for following the dress code. The $500 prize is yours, and they need to pay up. You should also be eligible for unemployment since this is not actually a for cause termination as far as unemployment is concerned.
I'm betting that the real reason you were fired was that the judgey managers were intending for one of them to get the prize, & weren't expecting any of you peons to try for it. I also wouldn't be surprised if the reason that hardly any of the other peons dressed up was because they suspected that it was a setup.
As far as the dress code goes, doesn't Gonta dress in a business suit, anyway? They may have just harped on the fact that you wore sandals (and those are usually against a majority of dress codes for men, especially in the south).
Unfortunately, there's not a lot of recourse for the termination aspect, but you clearly won a prize prior to being fired and they need to pay out (and if not, then you can go through with a small claims case, but that may not be worth the time and effort at this point).
Two days later, the OP returned with an update.
Well, my problem essentially ended up closing itself out within a day. Had initially planned on writing this last night but got sucked into a web novel (Worm, really good stuff), which made me forget about it. A lot of people had questions about stuff, so to clarify:
Our office does have a defined and written dress code, but it is very lax (at least on paper). Things are specifically listed in what we can and cannot wear, and the latter category is made up of very few things, beyond sexually explicit stuff.
As I said I do not work in a call center, just a similar environment (specifically an audio transcriptionist service). We listen to audio calls and type them out, and we use foot pedals the entire time, where taking off your shoes at your desk is strongly encouraged to make it easy.
Because of this, many people wear sandals regularly and no footwear is listed in the dresscode at all. I did wear sandals as Gonta but I ALWAYS wore those at work. If you brought dress shoes or heels to my job and wore them I actually think it would make it impossible if not give you an injury. And my suit actually stood out quite a bit because basically no guys dressed that formally ever.
I did have the butterfly net (not a hammer as some people said, haha, Gonta's not that kind of guy) but one of my managers had a real-looking chainsaw so I don't think this is valid.
I told them my name was Gonta and explained the character a bit but don't think my managers or anyone looked it up and saw "killing game", as several people had guessed. In the email ranking thing I got I was listed as "Happy Bug Scientist", so I severely doubt this is what happened.
Very very soon after my initial post, a friend I'd told about what happened had his father call me, a guy who owns a mid-sized business in another part of town. We spoke for awhile about what happened and my prior experiences and he ended hiring me.
It's a MUCH nicer and considerably better well paying job than my last one, and my bosses don't seem to be crazy, so I'm happy. (Glassdoor reviews aren't scary, either!)
I was still a bit salty over the $500, and I had planned on maybe finding out if there was a way to report them for holding a fraudulent contest or something even if I had little recourse on the job.
But one of my managers actually ended up passing away after a car accident Sat and another who was with her is in the hospital under critical condition (last I'm told) and has apparently suffered some brain damage.
Obviously I wasn't on good terms with them but I didn't want that to happen. Pursuing the money at this point seems in bad taste so I've decided to let it go. She wasn't nice to me but hopefully my second manager ends up being as fine as she can be given the circumstances.
Thank you again for the legal advice and empathy-- helped me through this, even if things just sort of ended up happening themselves. Workers rights do seemed to be pretty screwed up in this country though, haha.
Here were the top rated comments from readers in response to the OP's update:
Objectively hilarious to get fired because you wore a suit and tie to work for a costume contest.
Was not expecting that to be the reason he didn't go after the $500.
They awarded the $500 to themselves.
I "won" a costume contest at work. My prize was my boss hitting on me and his wife firing me. (I wasn't even dressed sexy or revealing. Just goth, when I normally wore very conservative clothes to work.)
What a stupid workplace. I wish OOP pulled a Jim and showed up to work in a tux.