Chinese company fires two employees for having extramarital affair, kissing in office; gets sued
Representational image of couple kissing in public.
A company in China has been sued by its two colleagues for terminating their employment after they were found to be having an extra-marital affair and openly kissing each other in the working space.
The man, who has been identified as Liu, and the woman, who is known as Chen, were working in the same department of a pharmaceutical company in Sichuan province, southwestern China, as reported by City Locale.
Their extra-marital affair was revealed when the wife of Liu shared the couple's chat records with the tennis chat group and the general manager of the company in March 2020, which led to their subsequent termination.
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In the messages, the couple was seen exchanging messages like “I love you” and “I want to look at you all the time”.
Here's how the company dealt with the adulterous couple
After the couple's affair was exposed, Liu applied for leave to “take care of family issues” and the husband of Chen confronted the couple in front of other colleagues.
However, the couple's affair continued and they were seen kissing each other again at work.
In October 2020, a female colleague asked Chen to stop her behaviour which turned into an argument.
A joint complaint letter was submitted to the general manager by seven colleagues the next day.
After this, the company fired Liu and Chen while stating that they “went off the rails and violated rules outlined in the employee handbook”.
The employees filed lawsuits against the company. In the lawsuit, Chen has demanded compensation of 26,000 yuan (US$3,700) and Liu asked for more than 230,000 yuan (US$32,000).
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In its defence, the company said that the employee handbook clearly states it has “the right to break the labour relationship with employees who are morally corrupt, tarnish the company’s reputation and have a negative influence on the company.”
The courts gave the ruling in support of the company and dismissed the lawsuits.
Reacting to the incident, a user on Douyin wrote, “What a crazy world!”
“Obviously they did not work hard enough if they had the energy to find colleagues attractive,” commented another.
“Shame on them to even sue the company,” a third user wrote.
(With inputs from agencies)