41 Bosses Who Fired Employees Over Text And Made It Even Worse

These days, it seems like you get a message from your boss just as frequently as you get a meme from a friend. At least that’s the reality for most workers.

New research shows that 57% of companies now communicate with frontline workers via text, up 13 points from last year.

The survey, which was conducted with 1,000 frontline employees across various US industries, found that employees aged 18–24 say they prefer receiving updates from their bosses via text instead of email or face-to-face.

There are several known reasons why texting is becoming the go-to official communication tool.

Hybrid and remote work are now common, especially since the pandemic. Which means mobile communication, whether SMS, WhatsApp, or a company app, lets employees stay connected wherever they are.

Texting also helps send info in an instant, whereas phone calls can go to voicemail, and emails can sit unread for hours.

It also enables real dialogue, not just one-way broadcasting.

Texting has an extremely high engagement rate compared with email.

Stats show that around 90% of texts are opened within minutes, while emails often go unread for hours or even days.

Then there are deskless workers, who comprise 70-80% of the global workforce. They are mostly frontline and gig workers in healthcare, manufacturing, retail, and logistics.

Texts reach them directly on their phones without needing a login, app, or internet connection.

For example, a warehouse supervisor can update schedules in seconds, and construction crews can get urgent weather alerts without delay.

Digitalization has definitely overtaken human interaction, even in challenging and potentially life-changing moments.

According to a 2026 survey, 29% of American workers said they were fired by email, and 28% were fired over a phone call.

Only 30% were let go during a personal, face-to-face interaction.

It’s not just small companies. Big names like Amazon are also known to fire people over text and email.

In October 2025, some of the 14,000 Amazon employees who were laid off found out through “an impersonal text-message blast.”

The first message told workers to check their personal and work emails before coming in, apparently to stop anyone from showing up and finding their badge didn’t work.

Just to cover all bases, a second text instructed employees to call a help desk if they hadn’t received an email about their job.

Although companies often argue that giving the pink slip via text or email is more efficient, many people believe it feels impersonal and insensitive.

According to a recent survey in the UK, only 3% of Britons think it’s acceptable to be let go by email or text, and 7% think it’s “somewhat acceptable.”

Among small to medium employers, just 2% believe email is an appropriate method, compared with 11% for a phone call and a 98% preference for face-to-face notification.

Younger generations may be more comfortable receiving the news over text or email, a survey revealed.

At least one in eight millennial employees prefer to be fired over text or instant message instead of having the conversation in person.

“Being fired is never a comfortable thing. But because millennials are heavy users of social media and the digital space, they feel more comfortable conveying feelings in a short and succinct way,” says Richard Carriere, senior vice president of global marketing at Cyberlink.

In the same survey, however, many agreed that communicating through these channels has its downfalls in the workplace.

Workers faced difficulty in fostering strong relationships with their boss, and nearly half of all respondents said their top “communication pain point” is that it’s easy to misinterpret the tone of emails, IMs, etc.