Disney Fires Worker After Gator Tweet, Thinks Again

Shannon Sullivan tweeted photo of sign asking workers to play dumb about alligators
By Polly Davis Doig,  Newser Staff
Posted Jul 17, 2016 10:03 AM CDT
Disney Fires Worker After Gator Tweet, Thinks Again
A sign posted next to a small lake at Matheson Hammock Park warns of potential alligators, Wednesday, June 15, 2016, in Miami. An alligator dragged a 2-year-old boy into the water while he was wading in the Seven Seas Lagoon at Walt Disney World.   (AP Photo/Lynne Sladky)

"If a Guest asks if we have gators in the water around Tom Sawyer's Island (or any other bodies of water), the correct and appropriate response is, 'Not that we know of, but if we see one, we will call Pest Management to have them removed.' Please do not say that we have seen them before." So read the sign in the employee break room at Walt Disney World, where 2-year-old Lane Graves was killed last month. "I was very offended by it and I was pretty vocal about it," says Disney employee Shannon Sullivan, who tweeted a photo of the sign—and promptly lost her job, reports the Orlando Sentinel.

Disney says it didn't authorize the sign, and quickly took it down. But "at this point it became my morals and my integrity and what I believe in," Sullivan says. "I thought if I lose my job because of that, it's worth it to me." Yet after the Sentinel asked Disney about her firing on Thursday, she magically had a job again Friday morning. (Just miles from where Lane died, Disney firefighters were feeding alligators.)

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