Manager fears her employee will be more absent once she gets married, fires her two days before the ceremony, employee retaliates: 'I got quiet fired two days before my wedding'

Author image for Ben Weiss
Ben Weiss • Writer and Editor
Jul 15, 2025 2:00 PM EDT

It's always disappointing, though never surprising, to find out just how many workplace environments are still way too old-fashioned. Managers who fear that their employees are more committed to their personal lives than their professional careers should take a good look in the mirror and ask themselves if they deserve to be managers in 2025. Prioritizing one's job over one's happiness is certainly not the recipe for personal fulfillment, and it's not the kind of mentality that should be encouraged or applauded anymore. You might be thinking right now, "I thought we moved past this." We thought so too, but unfortunately, that does not seem to be the case here.

In this scenario, we have a female employer who also happens to be the daughter of the owner of the company. The author of this tale, who was one of her employees, began to notice that people were getting fired left and right as soon as they started to partner up. You can imagine what transpired when the author's own wedding was rapidly approaching…

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    Cheezburger Image 10529802496
    via Unsplash+ (Getty Images)

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

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    By the time I left my (now previous) company, I was the 13th young woman to quit. 13 girls all in their mid to late 20s. All under the same VP, a woman and the company owner's daughter.
    via SemperIgni
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    All women who recently got engaged/married/n ewly pregnant.
    via SemperIgni
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    After comparing notes, some of the girls and I realized these connections.
    via SemperIgni
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    A few weeks before the first girl left, we all were asked to provide our hourly breakdowns of our work week -
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    completely unprompted. None of the men were asked nor the women who were single or 35+. Then
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    we were given non- formal disciplinary action with a brand new (unrelated) HR
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    rep in the room. We all worked under the HR umbrella so it wasn't entirely uncalled for, but we were all in specialized roles of communication, training, recruiting,
    via SemperIgni
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    etc. Why the need for an HR generalist? They kept saying we needed to improve our productivity or focus or output when
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    when simultaneously no new major projects were being given to us.
    via SemperIgni
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    My "disciplinary" meeting happened two days before my wedding. My now- husband told me to quit there and then but I let it drag on for a bit, convincing
    via SemperIgni
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    myself that I could pull it together and keep my job even though I didn't really need to. This VP was heartless.
    via SemperIgni
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    Cheezburger Image 10529805312
    via Maxim Ilyahov

    The image does not depict the actual subjects of the story. Subjects are models.

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    When my mother- in-law do, she pulled me into her office a week later to talk about my department
    via SemperIgni
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    "slipping" in my absence like it was my fault I did all the work.
    via SemperIgni
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    The paranoia was insane in the office. Nobody knew who we could trust. One girl made a comment about having a lighter day
    via SemperIgni
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    waiting on recruiting responses and offered to take something off of someone else's plate. That same
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    comment got snaked back to the VP as her saying she had nothing to do.
    via SemperIgni
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    Once the first girl left, we all fell like dominoes. All of us were either not replaced at all or replaced with men.
    via SemperIgni
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    I felt so alone in this until I spoke with one of the girls who left and found out she had an identical experience. People
    via SemperIgni
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    began flooding Glassdoor and the HR team flooded it right back with fake, peppy reviews.
    via SemperIgni
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    There is no way that should have been legal. We know we were targeted because of our age, gender,
    via SemperIgni
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    and life status. Just yesterday, I learned through the grapevine that the VP's husband moved out the very same week we were all asked for our hourly schedules.
    via SemperIgni
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    Sometimes my husband and I would speculate about what kind of wrongful termination lawsuit
    via SemperIgni
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    us ladies could have formed had we all kept going and waited for them to fire us. If only.
    via SemperIgni
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    EDIT: holy cow I didn't expect this to get the response that it did! Let me clarify a few things (hopefully to help get some advice and to ensure that young women don't experience this same thing):
    via SemperIgni
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    - - Most (not all) of us were decently fresh out of college, maybe 1st or 2nd job. For me, it was my 2nd and I had just left ANOTHER
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    company that had the same blueprint issue (director of the charity was 50+ and never married,
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    so she hated every woman with kids and husbands - one of her old friends even admitted as such). 5 of the 13
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    women from this company were coming from environments like that so we were all so worried that WE were the problems.
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    When we finally compared notes months down the line, THEN we saw the consistencies.
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    Most of us had babies, other jobs, or had completely moved out of the city by then.
    via SemperIgni
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    ^ Expanding on that, none of us had the experience to know that we should have stuck around for them to fire us. Honestly, it
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    was on earth there and I didn't want to risk my new marriage and put my peace of mind in any more hardship than it needed to be. Survival was the goal at the time.
    via SemperIgni
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    - I don't plan on outing the company because they are RIGOROUS with their cleanup online. Glassdoor is hilariously sad to watch because of their obvious falsified reviews and cheap attempts
    via SemperIgni
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    to remedy the exposure. I also am still using a manager there as a reference and I don't want that to come into jeopardy
    via SemperIgni
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    should I ever look into working again. Hate that these are the rules but sometimes we can't afford not to play the game.
    via SemperIgni
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    - There was minimal evidence of these occurrences on paper. I've written down things in my personal notes from the time, but all of these behaviors, requests for hours, etc. all went
    via SemperIgni
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    theorize that she never put any of us on a formal performance plan because then there
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    would be some semblance of evidence that she was doing this to all of us at the same time.
    via SemperIgni
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    - I am so sorry so many of you have experienced something similar. Let this story be a lesson to management or potential future management!!
    via SemperIgni
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    Young women: don't be afraid to tell someone you trust what's going on.
    via SemperIgni

  • This story just goes to show that far too many employers think they can get away with unfair and unjust reasons to fire someone. In this case, this lady clearly does not have a strong understanding of separating work from life. After all, her father founded the company. Her family life quite literally overlaps with her professional one. Perhaps that blurring of boundaries has made it particularly challenging for this lady to have a firm grasp of appropriate workplace behavior from a managerial standpoint!

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workplace-stories toxic-manager employee work stories toxic-workplace job work toxic-management toxic-boss wedding overworked-employees company job interview toxic-work-environment
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