Wow. I mean, come on, thats like the least offensive thing ever. At the most, maybe tell the manager to tell them thats not the “spirit” of the workplace, but firing for this is a step too far.

If the CEO wasn’t a jerk before he certainly is now.

Making powerful people feel bad usually gets a negative response from them.

Even just generally, if you make someone lose face publicly, they're prone to lash out at you since they often feel they can't back down.

Yeah this should have been a quiet word from HR to not say stuff like that.