French court says man was wrongfully fired for not being ‘nice’

You can’t get fired because a company doesn’t like you enough.

At least, that’s according to France’s highest court, the Court of Cassation, which ruled earlier this month that a man who was fired for not participating in certain business activities billed as part of their “fun” culture was unfairly fired , according to The Washington Post.

The man’s legal team said their client was not seen as “nice” for refusing to participate in corporate events involving large amounts of booze. The man also claimed to have a work culture where people engaged in activities such as mimicking sexual acts, sharing beds with other employees at work events and giving people inappropriate nicknames, according to the outlet.

A Google translation of the court documents characterized these acts as “practices advocated by the associates that associate promiscuity, bullying and sedition with various excesses.”

According to the decision, the man was fired in March 2015 for not embracing the company’s “fun” culture (calling it “professional incompetence”) and for having a rigid personality, the documents claim.

The company in question is Cubik Partners, a management consulting firm. It did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

France is known for it pro worker labor laws and well-known jokes about what’s going on impossible to get fired there. That generally applies to others as well countries in Europeincluding Ireland, where Elon Musk’s Twitter has already faced a temporary penalty for the firing of a director established there.

In this case, the court ruled that firing an employee for not performing the activities in question constituted a violation of “his freedom of expression” and that it is a “fundamental freedom” not to participate in any social activity .

The dismissed employee had asked for more than $400,000, which the Paris Court of Appeal rejected last year. This ruling partially reversed that court’s dismissal, ordered the company to give the former employee $3,000 and said it would review its claim for damages at some point in the future. by insiders.