Timbit Tyrants

Tim Horton's is currently on a national recruiting drive in a bid to hire on new workers for the iconic national donut chain, there's the chance to work flexible shifts, receive an educational sholarship, wear a uniform, work as a team and oh yeah, get fired by what can only be described as incompetent management...

London, Ontario Timbitress, Nicole Lilliman, was cashiered yesterday for the gravest of Tim Bit sins, she offered a complimentary timbit to a baby...

Apparently in a world full of corporate misdeeds and malicious double dealing, the real criminals are the ones working the front lines and providing that service thing to the customers.

As you could imagine, once word got out that Nicole had been fired for "theft", the backlash against Canada's national donut stop quickly became a tsunami more potent than a pot of day old coffee.

Quickly realizing that there was no way that they could win this incredibly stupid case for dismissal, the donut chain quickly rehired the woman today, offering up a tepid press release that blamed an overzealous manager for the firing. One hopes that the coffee in their stores has more warmth to it, than the absolution of blame that Tim's tried to hoist in that short little post it note.

And while it's all well and good to try and be done with the tempest in the coffee pot, there seems to be more to the story that the damage control team would like us to know.

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In a Globe and Mail article from today, Ms. Lilliman recounts how she was greeted by a junta of three Tim's managers who advised her that she had given away free food and would thus have to be dealt with. The chain's district manager didn't exactly come across as the understanding type either with her "rules are the rules" talking point in the Globe article.

Lilliman's case for defence in the Timbit scandal, was quite simple and sensible. A baby who was about 11 months old was fussing a bit in the line, and she gave her the treat to quiet her, since her mother — a Tims' regular — had been "having a bad day. "

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That gesture of common sense, apparently did not seem to wash over the Star Chamber of managers, who that felt that justice should be as swift as a Taliban execution squad as they wasted no time in their deliberations .

Lilliman a three year veteran of the donut wars, was terminated on the spot.

Overkill anyone? Bad management certainly!

Makes you want to run out and pick up an application for employment now doesn't it.

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More than likely it makes the rest of the working staff at Tim Horton's across the country ready to seek out a union rep and a union card to sign one would think.

Now that she's securely back behind the counter doling out the crullers, Timbits and coffee here's a free bit of advice for Tim's , make the woman a manager, she clearly has more common sense when it comes to customer service than the three clowns plus the district manager that fired her yesterday!

Better yet, maybe Dunkin' Donuts or Country Style should lead a raiding party, seems to me that this is an employee that knows how to keep the customers coming back, which is something that you would think the donut world would be all about...