Does your company use gift certificates to try to retain excellent employees? Apparently, some workers need to be told there are limits on what they can pay for with the certificates.
An Iowa company fired an employee for trying to hire a prostitute.
Normally, of course, many companies wouldn’t even want to know about these kinds of off-the-clock activities of its employees.
The catch in this case: The employee wanted to use a company-provided gift certificate to pay for the hooker.
Neil Jorgensen worked at the Riverside Casino near Iowa City, according to the Des Moines Register.
Last November, the casino gave him a $100 Riverside gift certificate and a free night’s stay at its hotel in recognition of a year’s employment.
Jorgensen had a really nice dinner at the hotel restaurant on the night he used his gift – but it included a couple of cocktails and a bottle of wine.
Later that night, he called hotel managers and asked for a hooker.
When the hotel manager went to Jorgensen’s room to ask him to stop calling for prostitutes, he answered at the door in the nude.
Jorgensen was fired the next day.
What was he thinking? At his hearing for unemployment benefits (he didn’t get them), Jorgensen explained that Riverside advertises that it’s just like Las Vegas, so he thought he was in the Nevada city.
Perhaps in Jorgensen’s case, what happened in Vegas really should have stayed there.