In South Korea, A
bank employee was found to be playing online games that use crypto as its in game currency. The bank claimed that the employee is a habitual gambler and fired him from his job. The ex-employee naturally raised his concern to HR as he thinks it is unfair dismissal but the HR rejected his appeal which led him to file a lawsuit. In the end, even the court sided with the bank. Even though the ex-employee claims that he never played during work hours and that his habits did not interfere with his work quality, the court rules it to be undignified to be gambling with crypto.
If crypto wasn't involved, do you think this employee would have gotten fired?
Depends actually. If you are gambling within the premises of your company then they have the rights to fire you although it is not stated. It might as well be a preference of your company and that's out of our hands. Hard to determine whether it is just because of the involvement of cryptocurrency which lead to this unfortunate outcome. It may also be due to restrictions on gambling activities in South Korea. Not quite sure but as far as I know it is prohibited to gamble in public, in this country, and there's a specific district wherein casinos are allowed to operate. With this, if you cannot limit yourself gambling outside the area where such activity is allowed, then you are basically committing a crime by letting them know. As others have mentioned, it could also be stated in his contract with the employer.
But at the end of the day, he's already fired. What's best is to learn from this instance and to just avoid doing it in front of other people to lessen the potential problem such as what he experienced. We all know gambling has a negative image to many countries and to be a responsible civilian, make sure you know the rules and to follow it.