Beware of threatening to get someone fired, you could end up in court

boing
1

Originally published at: Beware of threatening to get someone fired, you could end up in court | Boing Boing

…

1 Like
2

Why is “Santaland Diaries” running through my head right now? :thinking:

5 Likes
3

“She said, “I’m going to have you fired.” I had two people say that to me today, “I’m going to have you fired.” Go ahead, be my guest. I’m wearing a green velvet costume; it doesn’t get any worse than this. Who do these people think they are? I’m going to have you fired!” and I wanted to lean over and say, “I’m going to have you killed.”

16 Likes
4

3 Likes
5

What happened here is pretty bad. For anyone who doesn’t feel like digging into it, a woman who worked for an insurance company declared bankruptcy. She had purchased a car from a car dealership. The car was repossessed, and the debt discharged, costing the car dealership $15,000. The dealership was a client of the insurance company, so the manager of the dealership called up the woman’s boss and threatened that if they didn’t fire her, he was pulling his business from them. I’m not at all familiar with tortious interference, so I’m not going to pretend that I understand the law here, but I do know unethical behavior when I see it, and that’s unethical behavior. And it should qualify as tortious interference. What really bothers me is that Volokh doesn’t see a problem with this behavior, other than that it can result in legal liability in some states. From the linked article:

I’m generally skeptical of the legal theory on which Grako and similar cases rest; I think that, if T (here Ramza) is free to cut off relations (employment or otherwise) with P (here Grako), and D (here Walsh) is free to cut off relations with T, it’s hard to see why D shouldn’t be free to threaten T with such a cutoff as a means of pressuring T to stop doing business with P.

So, basically…“Employees…fuck em!” That’s not cool. People are allowed to declare bankruptcy. Shit happens. It doesn’t make them worthless.

9 Likes
6

Well, yeah.

Reason is libertarian.

8 Likes
7

Ah, well then yeah, that tracks.

8 Likes
8
  • Big in the 80s
  • Republican with family connections to powerful Democrats
  • Successfully ran for executive office despite zero prior experience in public service
  • First political campaign nearly derailed by disturbing revelations of sexual misconduct
  • Hosted Celebrity Apprentice
  • Used “You’re Fired!” as a groanworthy line

It’s really weird how many ways Arnold’s life has mirrored Trump’s.

6 Likes
9

And yet just a few years ago Sedaris proposed a “citizen’s dismissal” that would let anyone fire someone because he’s forgotten what it’s like to be in one of those positions.

2 Likes
10

The exception being that he’s a lot smarter than the Orange Oaf and shows some capacity to learn from his misdeeds.

7 Likes
11

… a sort of pseudo-intellectual version of 4chan

6 Likes
12

From way back when David Sedaris was worth listening to. I still love those stories, I just don’t want to hear a word out of him now unless it’s an actual apology for everything he’s done in the last 8 years or so.

3 Likes
13

Seems to me that a key part of this story is that the dealership sought to have the insurance employee fired for something other than their job performance. So threatening to take your business elsewhere because your interactions with an employee have been less than positive should be fine. Threatening to take your business elsewhere because you lost at a game of poker to the employee (or any of a myriad possible non- work related interactions) is definitely not fine. The spitefulness is important.

5 Likes
14

This topic was automatically closed after 5 days. New replies are no longer allowed.