He accidentally used an office senior’s towel at gym and was fired 5 days later: Swiss techie who was earning nearly 1 cr annually shares his experience in an online postA software engineer in Switzerland says a simple mistake at a gym sauna was followed by the loss of his job just five days later. The engineer, who said he had worked at a major tech company since 2022 and earned about CHF (Swiss franc) 100,000 a year, roughly Rs 1 crore shared his account on Reddit after being laid off. According to his post, he accidentally picked up another man’s sauna towel after a workout on May 8. He later realised that the towel belonged to a senior member of his own company’s management.What happened next is what turned an ordinary gym mix-up into an unusual workplace story. The executive allegedly looked at him and said he could “start to look for a new job”. The engineer says he then went to the gym reception, as instructed, and got the executive another towel.Five days later, on May 13, he received a 7.30am call from HR on Microsoft Teams. He was told he was being laid off for “economic reasons”. The company, he said, was already carrying out large-scale layoffs, so he initially believed he had simply been included in the wider cuts. But the timing of the dismissal made him wonder whether the sauna incident had anything to do with it.
“Here is an insane story about what it means to be an employee…”
He posted with his username u/Fraktalchen under the subreddit r/antiwork and said that he regularly went to the gym on Tuesdays and Fridays. “Here is an insane story about what it means to be an employee and totally shows that employee = slavery. This happened to me,” he wrote.On that Friday, after finishing his workout, he entered the sauna and accidentally took another member’s towel. It was only afterwards that he discovered the other man was part of his company’s upper management. The executive did not, according to the engineer, create a scene. Instead, he allegedly told him to start looking for another job and asked him to get a replacement towel from reception.“Accidentally I mixed up the sauna towel and the owner unfortunately was a member of the upper management of the company I worked at. When he figured out that I took his towel, he stayed calm and simply said that “I can already start to look for a new job” and I should go to the reception to get him a new towel which I politely did,” he wrote ahead.Five days later, his employment ended. “On 13 May 2026, I then got the layoff call via teams at 7:30 with HR, telling me that I am laid off for economic reasons. The company was already laying off employees on a large scale so basically I simply was put onto the list,” he added.He said large-scale layoffs were taking place when he was dismissed. That is why he initially thought he had simply been included in the company’s broader redundancy exercise. But the earlier warning from the executive left him questioning whether the two events were connected.He said he contacted his legal-protection insurance provider, known in German as Rechtsschutzversicherung, about the matter. According to him, he was told that without evidence linking the executive’s warning to his dismissal, there was little that could be done. The engineer also pointed out that there were no cameras inside the sauna.
He now fears a hidden blacklist
The engineer’s concerns did not end with the layoff. In his Reddit post, he claimed he had been placed on a “hidden” blacklist of people considered “antisocial” and said such lists were informally shared among employers. “In addition, I am now on a “hidden” blacklist containing “antisocial” people who should never be hired. These lists exist unofficially and employers share them,” he wrote.He said that he had joined the company in 2022 and described the workplace as good enough to stay there. Now, he says he has been unemployed for about three months. His next option, he wrote, may be to start his own business. “This is a clear reminder of how worthless you are as an employee. It is the modern form of slavery and designed to kill any individuality someone has. Your performance at the company does not matter.” he wrote. “I am probably forced to create my own business somehow. Gladly I saved as much as possible and have 300k in stocks.”
