The Story Of A Man Getting Fired For Posting A Meme Has Started Conversations Of Employer Overreach

Believe it or not, there was a time when having a Facebook wasn’t so pervasive. Over 10 years ago, it was as simple as adding the people you liked and ignoring the ones you didn’t. Today — not the case. You either don’t have a Facebook or do, and if you do, you need to be connected to everyone from your closet friends, to your furthest relatives, to your prying employers. Which is great when you’re connecting with your out-of-state Grandma, but not so great when your boss gets so offended by the Elmo meme that you shared that they fire you. Which is exactly what happened to a Michigan-based stone cutter living in New Boston, Michigan, named Cody Hidalgo.

Cody shared a fairly innocuous Elmo meme — it wasn’t even the Elmo doing coke meme — to his Facebook page one Sunday afternoon (his day off) only to allegedly be texted by his boss (Andy) a few hours later with the following,

Cody Hidalgo/Facebook

“We don’t make a dollar when [you’re] shitting all the time. Why don’t you stay home and do your shitting. I don’t like to play your bullshit games. Maybe [there’s] a company out there that would put up with your games [because] I won’t. Good luck!”

To which Cody replied, “What are you talking about?” which is honestly classy on Cody’s part. Better than sending the Elmo doing coke meme with a caption reading, “You good Andy?” Cody’s boss responded with “Look on your Facebook page do you think [things] don’t get around?”

Good for Cody, while we mourn the loss of his job from Roman Stone Works, if all of this actually went down it’s for the best — who wants to work for a boss that can’t handle an Elmo pooping meme and polices what you do with your free time when you aren’t at work?

When Cody posted the meme next to a screenshot of texts from his boss, users quickly trolled the Roman Stone Works employment page with memes to the point the page has been temporarily shut down. They were outraged at the overreach by the boss, to troll his employees’ Facebook pages. Which we imagine was a far worse for Andy than seeing an Elmo meme about one of his employees taking a deuce.