If you’re going to call in sick from work to attend a sporting event, you may want to stay away from cameras or you could find yourself out of a job.
Nina Farooqi was a digital content coordinator whose friend was able to score tickets to the Euro 2020 semi-final soccer game on Wednesday, The Daily Mail and other media outlets reported.
So she did what nearly any fan would and called in sick from work so she could attend the match.
She told The Telegraph that if she had asked for the day off, her request would probably have been denied because her company is short-staffed.
So that was where her sick time came in.
After arriving at Wembley Stadium for the game last week, she and her friend realized they had great seats, right behind the goal, The Telegraph reported. But the location was a double-edged sword. The seats were in a perfect spot to see the action, but they also were in a direct shot of the cameras capturing the came.
At first, Farooqi was worried about being seen, but then said she figured she’d not be noticed in the crowd of 66,000.
She was wrong.
By halftime, friends as far as Australia and America were messaging Farooqi telling her that she was on television.
“The whole world had seen me celebrating. The rational part of me thought, ‘Oh no, is this going to come back to haunt me?’” Farooqi told The Telegram.
And it did.
Her bosses called her Thursday morning telling her not to come in,The Telegram reported.
“They said they’d seen I’d been at the game and I was honest about why I did it. But I didn’t get any sympathy at all and they said that’s it.” that’s their call and the consequence of what I did,” Farooqi told The Telegram.
But she also told the newspaper that she would do it again.
Her now-former employer said they would have encouraged her attendance at the game if she had not lied. Claiming she needed a sick day was in breach of her contract, Composite Prime told The Telegraph.
“As a business, we value honesty and integrity, and we don’t tolerate any employee taking advantage of our policies,” Charles Taylor, director at Composite Prime, told the Mirror.
While she was fired from Composite Prime, she is also a freelancer photographing soccer games, the Ilkley Gazette reported.
She is also a freelance video producer, the Mirror reported.
