The employee had replied with an OK emoji which offended her manager.

When emojis are a fun way of different moods and expressions, it cost an employee in central China her job. The employee was fired after she replied to her manager with an OK emoji on instant messaging app WeChat, an online news site added.

The manager of the establishment in Changsha, Hunan province, had asked the employee in the team's WeChat group last week to send over some meeting documents. The employee replied with an OK emoji which offended her manager, South China Morning quoted Btime reports.

The screenshots of the conversation went viral on microblogging site Weibo, with 280 million views for posts on the topic. "You should use text to reply to the message if you have received it. Don't you know the rules? Is this your acknowledgement of receipt?" the manager replied to the employee. Post this, he asked the employee to contact the human resources department and sort out her resignation.

Shocked by her manager's decision, the employee said, "This is a real case, the resignation is still being processed. I have worked for many years and this is my first encounter with this kind of stupid situation. I am good-tempered therefore I didn't retaliate."

Wang Li-ping, a Renmin Business School professor specialising in management and human resources, said that "of course this is an arbitrary reason to fire an employee". Wang said, "But this is what may happen in small and medium-sized companies as they may not have a comprehensive regulation or system related to this kind of situation."

In a similar case earlier this month, an employee was reprimanded for "lacking basic WeChat manners" for replying "Um" in Chinese, which means "noted", according to a report in regional newspaper the Chongqing Chen Bao.

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