Australian man gets fired for sharing meme, gets $200,000 in compensation

Modified Aug 15, 2020 10:13 GMT

Jeremy Habley, better known as TheQuartering, is a notable American YouTube commentator with around 846k subscribers on his channel. His videos are generally commentaries about gaming, comic books, and general world issues.

Of late, he has been covering other controversial issues regarding certain internet personalities, in addition to gaming-related news. In this article, we look at a rather feel-good incident that Jeremy covered a few days ago.

Australian man gets fired for sharing a meme

We open with a parody Hitler clip originally from the 2004 German war drama 'Downfall'. The fuhrer's generals seem to tell him about a lost lawsuit, which makes him furious, and he ends up calling him a Nazi, somewhat ironically.

Image Credits: TheQuartering, youtube.com

Regardless, TheQuartering compares the current situation with an older one, in which another employee was fired for sharing a similar meme. Unlike this time, however, there was no 'revenge' for the employee. Further, we see another employee who got fired for sharing an Elmo meme.

You can see the meme below.

After this, he moves on to the current situation. As it turns out, an Australian BP worker called Scott Tracey got fired for sharing a joke about the company’s BP negotiations. The video, which was edited by his wife, was put on a closed Facebook group, but was somehow brought to his boss’ attention.

However, he filed a 'wrongful dismissal' case, with the legal proceedings going on for around two years. During the proceedings, BP argued that the meme was highly offensive and inappropriate, and was a valid reason for an employee to be fired.

However, Mr Tracey argued that the meme was only supposed to be a joke, a point with which TheQuartering agreed. We see a Ricky Gervais clip explaining the situation, and reminding people that it is only a joke. However, as already mentioned, Mr Tracey ended up winning the case after two long years.

As it turned out, the Federal Court did not think that BP executives had been likened to Hitler's Nazis. In March, the employee returned to work at the BP Kwinana Oil Refinery. Further, the court ordered BP to pay around $177,000 as compensation, along with about $24,000 worth of pension payments.

You can watch the entire video below: