We can all probably agree on this: Criticizing your employer on the Web is a stupid thing to do. But what should the punishment be?

Dan Leone was the west gate chief on game days at the Philadelphia Eagles’ Lincoln Financial Field. He worked on game days for the Eagles for six years.

Recently, he became upset at the Eagles’ decision to let longtime Safety Brian Dawkins sign with the Denver Broncos.

Leone expressed his frustration with Dawkins’ departure by posting this on his Facebook page: “Dan is [expletive] devastated about Dawkins signing with Denver … Dam Eagles R Retarted!!” (We haven’t corrected any spelling in the post.)

Leone regretted his post soon after making it and took it down.

Less than two days after posting his remarks, Leone says he was contacted by the team’s director of event operations, Leonard Bonacci, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer. Leone says Bonacci told him they had to talk about the Facebook post.

Two days later, Leone says, he received a call from the team’s guest services manager, Rachel Vitagliano, who fired him over the phone in a call that lasted less than 10 minutes. Leone says he never heard back from Bonacci.

Leone says he was ready to apologize, and did so when he got the call that he was fired. He says Vitagliano didn’t want to hear it and told him he couldn’t be trusted, the post made the team look bad and the only option was to fire him.

As you might imagine, Leone’s story has become a célèbre. The article in the Inquirer notes that he grew up in the shadow of the Eagles’ old Veterans Stadium and that he has a neurological disorder called transverse myelitis. The disorder requires him to do his job at the stadium sometimes in a wheelchair.

The title of the article is a rallying cry: Cold Eagles sure are thin-skinned. It suggests the Eagles could have handled the situation with a warning, a suspension and that Leone deserved a face-to-face meeting even though he was a part-time employee.

Leone says, “If they called me right now and told me to come back to work, I would. I’m not holding any grudges. I just want to do my job.”

So, what do you think? Was the firing too harsh? What about the way it was allegedly handled? (The Eagles won’t comment.) Is a suspension with a warning a better way to handle this situation? Does it depend on exactly what’s said in an employee’s Web post? How would you handle an employee’s Web post critical of your company?

Let us know what you think in the Comments Box below.

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.

A police complaint says Ravone Jones showed up at the Qdoba restaurant where he worked one night and grabbed himself a beer, according to The Capital Times.

The restaurant manager told him he had to pay for the beer. Jones allegedly became irate and threw a $5 bill at the manager.

Next, Jones went to some young women seated in the restaurant and began talking to them. They asked the manager to get Jones away from them.

The complaint says the manager asked Jones to leave four times.

Then, he allegedly went to the front of the restaurant and started throwing brownies and cookies onto the floor. The complaint says he also went into the kitchen and threw pots, pans and boxes of hot sauce.

A police officer said as he was taking him to jail, Jones remarked that he was trying to get fired from Qdoba.

The officer said when they booked Jones, he said he wanted to collect unemployment, but couldn’t if he quit.

We’re guessing that Jones isn’t going to get unemployment payments.

Hospital technician Tracey Parks had taken three sick days in one year. Then she received written notice from the Cooper Health System in Camden, NJ, that she would be dismissed if she missed work again. Her absences were because either she or her asthmatic son was sick.

Then one morning, she had to call her supervisor to say she would be unable to come to work. Parks’ 4-year-old niece had been dropped off at her doorstep the night before because the child’s mother was homeless and couldn’t take care of her. No one else was available to care for the child.

Cooper fired her. She appealed a six-week unemployment disqualification which is imposed in cases of employee misconduct.

A state appeals court ruled Parks should not have been barred from collecting state unemployment benefits for the six weeks. The judge said all of Parks’ absences were justified by family emergencies.

What do you think of this case? Let us know in the Comments Box below.

A high school girls’ basketball coach was fired after he said he would not apologize for badly beating another team.

Covenant School in Dallas recently defeated Dallas Academy in girls basketball 100-0.

After the game, Covenant, a private Christian school, posted a statement on its Web site regretting the outcome of the shutout: “It is shameful and an embarrassment that this happened. This clearly does not reflect a Christlike and honorable approach to competition.” The statement was signed by the school’s headmaster and board chairman.

Covenant Coach Micah Grimes sent an e-mail to The Dallas Morning News that said he didn’t agree with his school’s statement.

He wrote: “I do not agree with the apology or the notion that the Covenant School girls basketball team should feel embarrassed or ashamed. We played the game as it was meant to be played. My values and my beliefs would not allow me to run up the score on any opponent, and it will not allow me to apologize for a wide-margin victory when my girls played with honor and integrity.”

The school’s headmaster would not comment when asked whether Grimes’ firing was connected to his statement to the newspaper.

The score at the half was 59-0. A parent who attended the game said Covenant continued to make 3-pointers even in the fourth quarter.

Dallas Academy has eight girls on its varsity team and about 20 girls in its high school. It hasn’t had a win in the last four seasons. The school specializes in teaching students with “learning differences” such as short attention spans or dyslexia.

The Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools doesn’t have a “mercy” rule for girls basketball. However, the association’s director, Edd Burleson said “a golden rule” should have applied in this contest.

According to Burleson, the losing team “showed much more character than the coach that allowed that score to get out of hand. It’s up to the coach to control the outcome.”

Since this case involves a personnel decision which an employer is keeping private, there are details we don’t know — such as exactly why Grimes was fired.

But the situation does raise several questions. Organized sports can provide a means to teach children and teens useful workplace skills, such as teamwork. Do you agree with the fired coach’s decision to allow the score to reach 100-0? Do you agree with the headmaster’s apology? And would sending an e-mail to a newspaper, disputing his boss’ statement, be insubordinate enough to merit firing?

Let us know in the Comments Box below.

But she’ll get to keep her job now that managers have reconsidered their earlier decision.

The Postal Service sought to fire Rochester for “abandonment of the mail” and being absent without leave, even though Rochester’s union representative said she notified management.

Rochester was delivering mail on Dec. 10 when she received a phone call from David Dill, her fiance, saying, “I’ve been shot,” according to The Greenville News in South Carolina.

Dill was called a hero after he followed a bank robbery suspect and provided police with information.

The bullet struck very close to Dill’s carotid artery. If it had hit the artery, Dill could have died.

Now the Postal Service says the circumstances of the case were extraordinary, and Rochester’s perfect work record led to the firing notice being rescinded.

One day earlier this month, he completed his morning radio show at 10 a.m. just like he did every day. Ten minutes later, the station’s new general manager called him into his office.

Gibbons told the Des Moines Register, “They told me to clean out my desk, which is kind of funny because I don’t have a desk.”

Of course these days, the scenario isn’t all that unusual. The station’s parent company, Saga Communications, ordered their stations in Des Moines to cut costs.

Gibbons spends 12 hours a week in kidney dialysis. He’s been waiting more than two years for a transplant since doctors told him his kidneys were failing. He’s a tough match with type O-positive blood.

Gibbons sees one bright side to his recent layoff. He doesn’t have to go to bed at 7:30 p.m. and get up at 4:30 a.m. so he can host the morning show. Now he’ll have more time to recover from his dialysis.

ABC fired Sims on the day he tested positive when the company conducted a random drug screening.

A company manager told Sims later that day that he could pay for his own re-test. Sims said he couldn’t afford that, according to the Des Moines Register.

In his lawsuit, Sims claimed ABC hadn’t notified him in writing via certified mail that a retest was an option.

After the lawsuit was filed, the company sent a letter offering the re-test at its expense. Sims accepted, but tested positive again.

A trial judge ruled for the company, but said ABC had to pay Sims’ legal fees because it was slow to notify him of the available re-test, as required. The Iowa Supreme Court affirmed the ruling.

While many companies have realized the value of random drug testing, this case shows employers have to “dot every i and cross every t” if they have such a program.

Does your company have a drug testing program? Let us know about it in the Comments Box below.

An employee at a vacation rental company claims she was fired for greeting customers on the phone with “Merry Christmas” instead of “Happy Holidays.” Now a legal group is representing her before the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC).

Tonia Thomas claims her boss, Andy Phillips, at Counts Oakes Resort Properties in Lynn Haven, FL, fired her because she didn’t say Happy Holidays as her telephone greeting script was written.

Phillips says Thomas’ claims are false and that he fired her for different reasons, including insubordination, according to WJHG-TV.

However, Phillips does say that he wanted employees to use Happy Holidays because, “there’s also Hanukkah and we want to make sure we put a script in place that was not offensive to someone who did not celebrate Christmas.”

The EEOC complaint accuses the company of religious discrimination. She’s seeking compensation for lost wages. Thomas has found another job, but it doesn’t pay as much as what Counts Oakes paid her.

“I hold my core Christian values to a high standard and I absolutely refuse to give in on the basis of values,” said Thomas. She said she either wanted to wish people a Merry Christmas or not mention holidays at all because as a Christian she doesn’t recognize other holidays.

Thomas says she’s a Baptist.

Thomas Harper, an employment law attorney in Florida, says Thomas could have a hard time winning the case.

“I don’t think an employee has the right to insist [on saying Merry Christmas] unless that really is a tenet of their faith … if not, it becomes insubordination.”

His advice about workplace holiday greetings: The best choice might be not to say anything.

What do you think about Thomas’ lawsuit? Let us know in the Comments Box below.