WINONA, Minn. — A man who complained on social media about his company’s holiday gift — barbecue sauce and a grill scraper — wound up getting fired for it.

The man, a Canadian branch manager for Fastenal, was dismissed because of his tweet chiding the company for the gift choice.

The Minnesota Star Tribune reported that Hussien Mehaidli, 27, tweeted: “What kind of multi billion company gifts its Canadian employees barbecue sauce as a holiday gift? Yet the USA employees stuff their face with an actual holiday giftbox?”

Fastenal said the tweet violated the company’s policy on social media posts. CEO Dan Florness said the policy about acceptable standards of conduct is given to every employee and posted on the company website.

The Dec. 18 tweet was sent from Mehaidli’s anonymous Twitter account with zero followers. The next day, Mehaidli told CTV News, he got a call from his manager telling him to remove the post, which he did.

He suspects the company deduced his identity from a workstation in the background of a photo he had tweeted previously.

Mehaidli’s supervisors contacted the company’s human resources department, which recommended termination. He was fired on Dec. 31, without severance pay.

Florness told the Star Tribune the firing may have been an overreaction — and that he had not been aware of it until it hit the news three days later — but that he was not going to second-guess the decision of Mehaidli’s supervisors. He added that Mehaidli was a manager and that HR staffers may have thought he should have known better.

Florness also confirmed that, in a departure from previous years, Canadian employees did not get the basket of candy, cookies and other snacks that was given to U.S. workers. He said both gifts were valued at $27.

Fastenal, based in Winona, makes industrial fasteners and tools.