McDonalds fires CEO over relationship with employee

Apparently the dude I was quoting needed one, but thanks for your snarky driveby bullshit regardless.

escalated_quickly

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In a way, it’s good that they’re willing to enforce policy even when the CEO is the one impacted, but it’s still a completely terrible policy.

What you do outside of work should be none of your employer’s fucking business. Once you’ve stepped out of work, they’re no longer paying you, so their power should stop there as well. Otherwise you end up with a form of corporate serfdom, where everything you do is at the sufferance of the lord of the manor.

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At least the CEO didn’t go full George Costanza…

Was%20That%20Wrong%2C%20Should%20I%20Not%20Have%20Done%20That%20-%20Jason%20Alexander%20as%20George%20Costanza%20on%20Seinfeld%20%5Boptimized%203MB%5D

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There are many areas where I agree with your point about corporate serfdom, but here the issue is more about what the couple bring into the workplace, and how that effects its ability to function. Humans not being able to switch off their emotions, those feelings and that relationship can’t simply be checked at the door. Now I’m not against all romantic workplace relationships, but I am against ones where there’s a power imbalance, which is inevitable with a CEO. It’s not just about whether it’s fair to the lower-ranked person, but to others in the workplace.

Try as they might, human beings often lack the maturity to prevent their emotions from treating others differently. Are there some who could do it? Certainly. But there’s a strong argument to be made that most can’t and the consequences of allowing power-imbalanced workplace romances will be disruptive to the workplace.

The necessary exception is in employing a couple in a relationship before being hired. Obviously it would be wrong to discriminate in hiring or advancement against someone because of who they’re already in a relationship with prior to hiring. - As an aside, some would say married, but I regard that as discriminating against couples or polys who don’t believe in or can’t get married, and that a fairer standard is simply the disclosure of a relationship upon hiring if it’s with someone already within the workplace or who was hired at the same time, whether or not there’s then a power-imbalance because one could arise later on if one of them is promoted into a position directly above the other. - I see the policy of disallowing romantic relationships across a power imbalance from beginning after one is hired to be an imperfect but practical compromise. YMMV.

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I’ve had “leave me alone” not a bank loan presumably
fuck me now but not just yet amongst other smoke and trash
but the bad signs are best if you could put them down for
reading…(that might be a book when we discover the format)
:slight_smile:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-04-23/the-crisis-fiat-faced-as-it-lost-an-indispensable-leader
https://vaaju.com/italyeng/the-love-of-manuela-battezzato-and-the-family-sergio-marchionne/

At least in FCA this policy isn’t present.
I think that if a C-level executive is working a lot doesn’t have the time to meet a lot of people outside the work environment. Happens a lot that husband and wife are working in the same place.

On the other side what happens if a family business has success and become a big corporation?

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Actually I didn’t “need one” so thanks for your condescending and assumption laden attitude.

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There is probably something else going on. It is unlikely that a successful CEO (which he apparently was) having a consensual relationship (which it apparently was) would get sacked for this, policy or not. More likely there is a power struggle in the company, and this was a lever by which he was toppled. The gossip wing of the financial press is all over this, and will probably pick away until the truth is known. (Especially as he is British so the relentless British press is getting their teeth into it too.)

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Your initial take of, “So ostensibly I guess we’ve come to the point where no one can date anyone who works at the same place as them” came off as ignorant, either willing or not. My apologies if it was the latter.

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I suspect this as well. I find it dubious that this is McDonald’s suddenly becoming incredibly sensitive/woke to relationships in the workplace.

By all accounts it does not seem anything was illicit or inappropriate other than “This is against policy”. But then everyone seems to be keeping tight lips about any specifics at this point.

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image

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That’s a good and nuanced take on it. I’m still of the opinion that the perimeter of interest only extends as far as the workplace door.

If there is a possibility of a power differential causing disturbance to the workplace, then the focus should be on dealing with that issue. For example- shift reporting lines so you don’t have one member of a couple managing another, or disallow any involvement in one another’s performance reviews (if your workplace is idiotic enough to use them).

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Long term I want to see the power dynamics of hierarchical dominance removed or reformed entirely. But until we figure out how to do that, I see it as a thorny issue without a perfect solution, and that where I would strike the compromise isn’t necessarily where every reasonable person would. It’s one of those issues on which, IMHO, reasonable people can disagree.

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The underlying info missing from the story above is that McD’s has been in hot water recently for sexual harassment lawsuits. A lot of their stores have apparently been run by sleazy managers who trade employment favors for sexual favors. To combat this, they put in a policy that says “no relationships with people who report up to you, directly or indirectly.” To the CEO, of course, that means everyone is off limits.

The only thing they could have done was to fire him as an example to every store manager everywhere. “We take this policy seriously, all the way to the top.” It sends a strong message.

Cynical Me is whispering in my ear that this could have been staged as a sign to the presiding judges in the various ongoing trials. If the CEO was already thinking about moving on, why not do so while leaving a valuable message behind? Or maybe there were other difficulties and the board decided to sacrifice him for this purpose.

However it happened, the end result should be less harassment in their stores, and that’s only a good thing.

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I believe that Delmar Simpson is still serving a 25 year sentence for consensual sex with a subordinate. Sometimes differences in power are enough to be considered rape, even between consenting adults.

That was six women and eighteen charges.

That was a lot of rape, and all eighteen charges weren’t about “consenting adults”. He’s not serving 25 years based on a single one of those charges where it was arguably a consenting situation.

It was a drill sergeant and trainees. Many women said he used his power to rape them, not that everything was a consensual relationship.

Unfuck that guy forever.

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ISTR that none of the women testified that the sex was non-consensual. But the power differential is FAR greater than any that you could see in the corporate world. As trainees with little experience in the military, the women in question were particularly vulnerable to the idea that this was the way things REALLY worked. So 25 years seems about right to me for this sort of extreme abuse of power, even is the sex itself was consensual.

Your memory is wrong. Deeply deeply wrong.

A 21-year-old private said she was returning to her barracks from the bathroom when Staff Sgt. Delmar Simpson ordered her into his office, pushed her onto a couch, pulled off her shorts and raped her.

“I begged him to stop,” the private said. “He was laying on top of me. There wasn’t a whole lot I could do.”

One of the six women said she didn’t resist, and may have given the impression he could have sex with her at the beginning. One of two counts in her specific case were acquitted.

He was a rapist, and is in jail for rape.

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