“hiya Chelsea its Elaine from work. Sorry to send u a message like this but bin tryin to ring u but gettin no joy. I had to tell the owner bout  u losin that tenner coz obviously the till was down at the end of day. she wasn’t very pleased at all and despite me trying to persuade her otherwise she said I have to let u go. I’m really sorry.”

The Facebook conversation between fired employee Chelsea Taylor and her former boss. Note the 'xx' at the end of the first message. Lovely.

Apologies for starting this news story with such bad diction but considering the above message is believed to be to be the first time in Britain a worker has been sacked via Facebook, we thought it was worth reading. For those who haven’t seen the full story behind this yet, this concerns 16 year-old Manchester schoolgirl Chelsea Taylor who got her dismissal letter from Elaine Sutton, the manageress of her former employers, Cookies Café in Leigh, Greater Manchester via a private Facebook message.

According to the Daily Mail, Taylor’s furious mother condemned bosses at the cafe for being “heartless”, saying her daughter burst into tears when she logged on to the social networking site to find a dismissal letter littered with grammatical errors and ending with two kisses.

Taylor had apparently been fired from her Saturday job for losing a £10 note during an errand to get some biscuits for the staff. Chelsea’s mother Nicola, 37, who runs a taxi firm said: “To sack a young worker via Facebook is appalling and heartless – and way it was written was dreadful. I just can’t believe they didn’t even have the decency to tell her over the phone, let alone in person.

“And to have the message all mis-spelt with capital letters and apostrophes missing is simply disrespectful and sets no example to other employees.” She added that her daughter was “mortified when she realised she had lost the money, but accidents happen”.

A member of staff at Cookies – also known as the Lancashire Tea Room – said: “We don’t want to talk about this.”

While we can empathise with Taylor for losing her job in this manner it should again be pointed out that this was a private message so perhaps there is a temptation for over-reaction here. An epidemic of Facebook firings is hardly likely to follow; though hopefully this tale will put off anybody who was thinking of going down that avenue to give an employee their P45.