A man confined his former colleagues in their office for an hour because he was angry about getting fired.

Fired after two months

Vict Lim Siong Hock, 52, was a driver and logistics assistant for an electronics company.

The office was located in Pantech Business Hub.

Lim started working on Jul. 1, 2022.

But two months later, on Aug. 30, 2022, he was fired, even before he completed his probation period.

Locked up nine colleagues

Resenting the fact that his employment was terminated, Lim bought a padlock from a hardware store.

He used the padlock to lock the entrance to his former office on Sep. 1, 2022, at around 2:20pm.

The entrance was the only door to the office.

Lim claimed that he assumed all his ex-colleagues had left the office for their lunch.

Unfortunately, there were nine people in the office at that time.

The employees took staggered lunch breaks in order to have one person looking after the office premises at any given time.

Ex-colleague couldn't go to the toilet

At around 2:30pm, an employee who was trying to go to the toilet found that the front door could not be opened.

He and the other colleagues realised the front door was locked from the outside.

They alerted a colleague who was working in another part of the building, who went over and confirmed that the door was padlocked from the outside.

The owner of the company subsequently contracted a locksmith to remove the padlock that day. It cost the owner S$80.

A police report was lodged and Lim was identified via CCTV footage.

Sent abusive message to ex-colleague

Aside from this incident of wrongful confinement, Lim was also charged with sending a message with abusive words to an ex-colleague.

According to charge sheets seen by Mothership, Lim said "F*ck your mother" in the text message.

Lim was ultimately fined S$4,000 for the wrongful confinement, with the second charge of sending an abusive message taken into consideration.

Top photo: Andrew Koay