What I fear for is that the termination will be in his records and he will have to explain this extremely bizzare story to whoever asks or is interested. I'm glad it all worked out so well for him. Hopefully that silly detail will not affect his future.
What "records" do you speak of? One can choose to include or not include references on your resume, and your former employers can choose to say whatever they want to people checking refs (but, by convention, and to avoid legal trouble, will usually just confirm dates of employment). And since he was re-hired and is on good terms with the owner and his boss, I don't see any reason to even include anything about leaving the company, at all.
Not sure why there's three replies asking about "records." It's right there in your resume - date you worked at a company, huh weird, only 2 months, what happened?
The alternative is having whatever you had on your resume before + 2 month gap, which if anybody asks about you I guess lie. It's not a nothingburger though.
Re update link: "As much as I hate to go based on office talk, it seemed that the HR woman and the food thief may have been romantically involved."
That explains why it sounded like HR had an ulterior motive by appearing to side with the thief without seeming interested in the spice-fan's side of the story.
Even just reading the original article, it was painfully obvious that there had to be some sort of emotional entanglement between the offending party and someone in HR, either romantic or (less likely) blackmail.
What I fear for is that the termination will be in his records and he will have to explain this extremely bizzare story to whoever asks or is interested. I'm glad it all worked out so well for him. Hopefully that silly detail will not affect his future.