You're Fired. And Dumped.

I only caught a glimpse of the headline over someone’s shoulder on the Northern Line – “Boss fined for removing wife by e-mail,” it said – but appreciated the significance of the story immediately.

There have, of course, been precedents for technologically brutal sackings. In 2003, The Accident Group, a company that specialised in personal injury claims, sent its staff a text message that led to many of them discovering they had been made redundant. And in 2007 bosses at Robbs, a store in the market town of Hexham, set off a fire alarm and assembled the workforce in the car park to inform them they no longer had jobs.

There have also been precedents for technologically brutal dumpings. Phil Collins once famously let his second wife, Jill Tavelman, know about the end of their marriage by fax, while Britney Spears made him look positively romantic by dumping Kevin Federline by text message.

But this was the first time I’d come across an instance of someone seemingly combining the two. It raised a number of fascinating questions, including: is it ever OK to fire someone by e-mail?; is it ever OK to dump someone by e-mail?; and which of the two acts is worse?...

Read atTimes Online