According to dictionary.com, “the ick” is a term used to refer to a sudden feeling of disgust or repulsion to someone. I am not Gen Z, so I can say with some level of pride that when I first saw the phrase “the ick” pop into my social media feeds some time ago, I was clueless. It is now part of regular lexicon, so much so that this question was posed to an RKW attorney recently:

We have a male employee who gives the females in the office “the ick.” We can’t really say specifically anything specific he’s done wrong; they just feel like he’s always staring when he shouldn’t be or hovering too close to them. Can we terminate this employee for how he makes others feel?

The answer starts with an explanation of what it actually means to be an “at-will employee.” Employment relationships are presumed to be “at-will” in every U.S. state except Montana. This means that either an employer or employee can terminate the employment relationship, at any time, for any or no reason, except for an illegal reason.

Therefore, assuming that the at-will employment relationship has not been abrogated (e.g., by an employment contract), employers can terminate employees’ employment so long as they are not doing it for an illegal reason. Illegal reasons include the employee’s refusing to perform an illegal act, the employee’s exercise of a statutory right, or for a discriminatory or retaliatory reason prohibited by law.

If an employee later makes a claim that their employment was terminated for one of those illegal reasons, employers don’t have the luxury of throwing up their hands and saying, “I didn’t need a reason because this employee was at-will.” Rather, employers are tasked with showing the “legitimate non-discriminatory reason” for the termination. The more documentation an employer has to support that reason (e.g., policies maintained, disciplinary documents given, records of investigations), the easier their defense will be.

If an employer does not have a “legitimate nondiscriminatory reason,” or cannot prove that their proffered reason was not pretextual for discrimination, then the employer is in for a long trial – at a minimum –attempting to disprove the aggrieved employee’s claims.

So, can someone be fired for giving others the “ick”? If they don’t have an employment contract, there are no laws prohibiting it. But an employer doing so should take heed that they may eventually be in the unenviable situation of having to explain and attempt to justify with objective evidence what others may feel subjectively