Local firm sacks man for Pokemon outburst criticising Singapore
It is the hottest game for your phone. Yet it has indirectly led to one man in Singapore to be get the sack.
Pokémon GO is a new augmented reality game where players capture Pokémon characters on their smartphones as though the creatures were in the real world.
The game is currently not available in Singapore yet.
This fact riled one man.
Mr Sonny Truyen took to Facebook on Saturday to express his anger, stating in a post: "you cant ****ing catch pokemon in this piece of ****ing s*** country (sic)".
He then got into a spat with another Facebook user, insulting her.
During the exchange, Mr Truyen an Australian, made a number of swipes at the country.
This was then reposted on forums and social media gaining the ire of netizens.
His employer, local property portal 99.co, got wind of what happened on Saturday evening after someone wrote to them with a screengrab of the offending post.
Mr Darius Cheung, CEO and co-founder of 99.co, told The New Paper that after verifying the facts, a meeting was held with Mr Truyen "to understand events from his perspective."
Mr Truyen, an SEO specialist, only started his job with 99.co a week before the incident.
However, Mr Cheung felt that "the only appropriate response was to terminate our engagement with him".
Mr Cheung said: "I would like to add that Sonny did apologise in the meeting and had mentioned that he regrets his actions".
When asked why 99.co terminated Mr Truyen's contract with immediate effect, Mr Cheung said: "We believe this is a matter of principle and is a non-negotiable matter for us to make a stand as a company... We saw no reason to wait."
An apology by Mr Cheung was posted on the company blog yesterday titled An Apology And an Appeal.
It stated that 99.co does not "condone such language or behaviour" .
Mr Cheung added that instead of spreading negativity, Singaporeans should "embrace diversity and individual differences".
"I hope you would join me that, each time we encounter a message of anger and of divide, instead of fuelling it with likes and shares ... we would not allow individual incidents to damage us, and we would instead stand by our friends regardless of race, language or religion, regardless of nationality or gender orientation... "
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