A spokesman for the CGIL steelworkers’ branch in Bergamo, Italy, said the woman — a long-term employee — was fired from a metalworking shop for “singing and bothering her colleagues,” according to a report by Agence France-Presse.

The union spokesman claims the stated reason for her firing is ridiculous because her job was hammering metal, and no one in the workplace would be able to hear her more than a couple of yards away.

He says the her singing was a pretext that the employer used to fire a worker during hard economic times.

Barbara Emme worked 31 years for supermarket chain Kaisers in Berlin. She denies an accusation by her former employer that she kept bottle deposit receipts worth $1.65.

A court recently upheld the decision to fire her. Now, leaders of Germany’s major political parties are criticizing the decisions by Kaisers and the court.

“I don’t understand how a cashier can be fired because of 1.30 euros while managers who lose billions of euros can keep their jobs,” said Horst Seehofer, leader of the Christian Social Union party.

Barbara the Cashier says her phone has been ringing off the hook since news of her firing hit German media.

Unfortunately, she says she hasn’t received an offer of a new job.

Police in Ireland could’ve used some help with documents from Poland, specifically drivers’ licenses.

For some time, police in Ireland were tracking one of the worst drivers on its roads, a Polish citizen named Prawo Jazdy, who’d racked up dozens of speeding and parking tickets.

He was a wily guy. Every time he was arrested he gave a different address.

Oops. Turns out, Prawo Jazdy means “driver license” in Polish.

The traffic division recently admitted its officers had been mistakenly recording Prawo Jazdy as the license holder’s name, according to The Irish Times.

After they figured that out, they went back through their records to see how many times the mistake was made. It happened more than 50 times.

A simple Polish-English dictionary would have solved the mystery.

The city of Zhengzhou in China has issued an edict that government employees should not wear any “unnatural hair styles” or clothes that are too colorful.

The new regulations say city officials should make sure their clothing stays away from bright color schemes.

If colorful is wrong, what’s right? Neat and orderly, according to the rules.

“Don’t just dress any which way” the regulations demand.

Officials say no specific breach of workplace clothing etiquette triggered these rules. The purpose is to “improve the image of our public servants” according to wire service reports.

What if an applicant showed up for a job interview instead of going to the hospital?

That’s what an unidentified 16-year-old Toronto student did.

He and another student were stabbed near a high school.

But the student made it to his co-op placement interview at a veterinary clinic, according to The Canadian Press.

When employees at the clinic noticed blood on the student’s leg, they called police.

Both students were taken to the hospital.

Veterinarian Kent Ackerman said, “He did really well on the interview, and we were very proud of him for sticking to the appointment.” At the same time, Ackerman said he was “shocked” the teen would delay going to the hospital for the interview.

Seventy-two-year-old Robert Holding admitted delivering pot along his milk route.

He claims he only sold it to elderly customers for their aches and pains and that he didn’t make a profit from it, according to wire service reports.

A judge issued a 36-month prison sentence but suspended it because Holding visits his wife, who has Alzheimer’s disease, every day in a nursing home.

The judge told Holding he wasn’t a philanthropist helping the elderly out of the goodness of his heart. The jurist says this was a case of dealing drugs for profit.

The prosecutor also said there’s no evidence that the drug sales were only to elderly customers.

But Holding stands by his story.

Passengers on an Aeroflot flight that was about to take off for New York from Moscow recently insisted that a pilot was drunk and that he be replaced.

Alexander Cheplevsky slurred his words when he made his “welcome to flight 315″ speech over the plane’s speakers. Then he switched from Russian to unintelligible English.

Flight attendants initially ignored passengers’ complaints and threatened to expel them from the jet unless they stopped making trouble, according to The Moscow Times, which had a reporter on the aircraft.

One attendant allegedly told passengers that it wasn’t a big deal if he was drunk because the plane practically flew itself.

Cheplevsky eventually gave into passengers’ demands to show himself. Witnesses say he appeared unsteady on his feet and had bloodshot eyes.

“I don’t think there’s anyone in Russia who doesn’t know what a drunk person looks like,” said passenger Katya Kushner.

After Aeroflot representatives entered the aircraft, passengers demanded a whole new team of pilots. They got one three hours later.

Passengers may have been thinking about a Russian air disaster just two months ago. An Aeroflot subsidiary’s plane crashed, killing all 88 passengers and crew.

Investigators had found traces of alcohol in the blood of the captain who flew that doomed jet. The pilot turned over the controls to another crew member when he felt sick just before landing.

Aeroflot says there was no alcohol in Cheplevsky’s blood, but later added that he may have had a stroke just before the flight.

Sharon and David Hegyi, wife and husband, were laid off after working seven years at Tipperary Station in Australia’s Northern Territory.

Of course, layoffs are devastating, especially when both working parents in a family with children are let go at the same time.

But Sharon is really shocked at the company’s decision because just months earlier she played a key part in saving the life of her boss.

Sharon was an office worker at the Station, but she’s also a registered nurse.

Station finance manager David Breed had a severe heart attack at work last September.

Sharon gave him medication, hooked him up to oxygen and called an ambulance.

When Breed deteriorated rapidly, Sharon and David put him in a car and drove toward the nearest town. The ambulance met them half way there.

Breed recovered.

Fast forward a few months: The Hegyis returned home from a Christmas vacation to find they were being laid off.

They were given a separation package and told to leave their company house with their five children in two weeks.

The Station’s general manager confirmed to the Northern Territory News that Sharon had saved the life of one of his managers. However, he said the couple had been laid off for economic reasons.

The Hegyis are confident they’ll find new jobs soon.

Vilija Lobaciuviene is Lithuania’s most famous witch, according to wire service reports.

The debt collection company that’s hired her says her job is to hunt down companies and individuals who are failing to pay their debts.

The company’s director says, “Our new employee will help them [debtors] to understand the situation, reconsider what is right and wrong and act accordingly.”

Lobaciuviene is renowned for providing magical services including predicting the future and casting spells.

So we guess she’ll be predicting “troubled times ahead” for debtors who refuse to pay up.

The Constitutional Tribunal ordered that Pablo Cayo be given back his job as a janitor for the municipality of Chorrillos. He was fired for being drunk at work, according to wire service reports.

The justices ruled that the firing was excessive because Cayo didn’t offend or hurt anybody. The court also noted that it was just one incident, not a pattern of showing up intoxicated.

Peru’s Labor Minister criticized the ruling.

Celso Becerra, administrative chief of Chorrillos, also denounced the ruling. “We’ve fired four workers for showing up drunk, and two of them were drivers,” he said. “How can we allow a drunk to work who might run somebody over?”