“Asshole” is a lexicon fully in the gray area. Employers are able to select for or against assholes AT WILL. It’s the law.
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It says behind a pseudonym, after it puts the lotion on.
You must be new here. I changed my username from a version of my name to this just in the last two days because of things just like this. I decided that I didn’t want to use my name on all comments here anymore.
Do keep up.
Of course, you’re joining a thread nearly 300 messages and several days in as well.
If only this had been pointed out before…oh wait, it has been said by quite a few people probably 20 times above. You did read all the comments and all the discussion about “at will” employment in them?
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People’s ideas can change, but this kind if public assholery needs some apology (and public track record) to turn around (partially) a public display of barren dickolery. Until this minimal standard is reached, this stupid motherfucker is, publicly, a racist asshole.
Also, white people are the only people who can make contrition stick, so why not take advantage? I know I do.
I reply as I see. Do use the lotion, or I will use the cold tap on the hose. I’ll make it through the thread, eventually.
Lucky us.
I suggest tweeting or writing another blog post instead. It has been a while for both and you’re overdue.
Or are you saying that I’m a pretty girl and you want to dance around in my skin with your dog?
It depends on whether I like your tats.
I think this sums up my reaction to this thread pretty well. Head-on, this is tough to resolve. Should personal life affect the holding of employment? If it’s this uselessly, couched-in-well-documented-history-of-racism abusive, its pretty hard not to see why it wouldn’t. On the other hand, I can’t get past the nagging voice of @enso’s point that handing power to HR/PR departments to decide whether a person’s private-life actions should affect their opportunity to hit those Maslows can be a dangerous thing. So rather than try to wade in, head-on, I’d head in a different direction altogether.
I’ll put my tl;dr at the top, as a thesis statement: A robust welfare state combined with strong monopoly prevention mechanisms removes the need to compel particular individuals and companies to continue to associate with one-another when they find each other abhorrent, or even just superfluous.
The company shouldn’t have to continue to associate with this asshole, but his firing from this particular company also shouldn’t destroy his life, or his ability to pursue his livelihood and passions. The moral weight of arguing that this guy shouldn’t be fired for his private-life actions rests on the idea that firing him will have disastrous, life-altering consequences on his health and well-being. This is only true because Americans’ access to healthcare, food, shelter, etc…is tied to being employed. Firing someone, in America, is at least a sentence of hard time, if not a death sentence.
So to the question: “should a company be compelled to continue to employ someone they find abhorrent, or at least dangerous to their mission statement/ability to do business,” if we accept an answer of “yes, otherwise that person can’t put food on his/her table” then we are missing the underlying absurdity that companies have this kind of fundamental control over our lives in the first place. Amusingly (not amusingly at all) many corporations and business owners throw billions of dollars at fights against legislation like single-payer and other social welfare programs that would leave them less on-the-hook for the lives of individuals, all in the name of short term savings in taxes.
But in not asking the deeper question of “should we be destitute if we don’t continue to be employed at company X” we are also unintentionally allowing the converse to go unchallenged, that people should remain desperate enough to stay at companies whose mission statement directly disagrees with their own personal morals. Why should this compromise be made on either end? People should be able to have the freedom to leave companies whose business practices, or even the personal practices of management or their co-workers, are fundamentally incompatible with their own.
Of course, legally they do have this freedom, but this whole conversation has been about more than legality. In reality, this freedom is very thin. In order to achieve a greater sense of moral freedom, people shouldn’t have to face destitution. They also shouldn’t have to face utter removal and blacklisting from a particular field if they leave a particular employer. This is where monopoly controls come into play. If a single company, or a small group of colluding companies makes the entry of newcomers near-impossible, then that company’s mission statement effectively becomes the gatekeeper for that field. This could still result in @enso’s disaster scenario where a gay CEO can never again work in field X, simply because the current gatekeepers object to his orientation. The combination of a reduced personal risk through a strong welfare state and monopoly controls should mean that this executive should be relatively free to develop a disruptive startup with either an explicit or implicit new social charter behind it.
In our current system, yes, the question is fairly intractable. As usual, the answer seems to be changing fundamental structures.
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This. Damn good thesis. Would read a second time.
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You should be flattered. He never offers that to me.
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