Racist fracking aficionado fired after video posted to YouTube

[anon68952647]

@Mister44

If you behave properly at work, you should be able to keep your job.

That sounds impractically absolute.

[anon67050589]

@albill

Ignored it unless I saw evidence of issues in the workplace or had a workplace complaint. It isn’t my job to police the behavior of people who work for me outside of work.

But how do you know that this guy has been exemplary in his work up to this point? He may well have been skirting dismissal in a variety of ways for a while, but there was never a clear-cut reason to reward him with unemployment compensation.

In relationships, whether personal or professional, outsiders only see the tip of the iceberg.

[anon68952647]

@albill

I don’t care what they do outside of work unless I get a visit from the cops.

There is nothing they could possibly do, legally, that would change your opinion?

What if they painted their truck (assuming this is a sound analogy, as I also manage contractors) with a huge ISIS flag and park it on your site?

Would you not respons to the more than likely concerns of YOUR customers?

[anon68952647]

@Mister44

What if someone called saying they were “uncomfortable” with a black or Hispanic person mowing their yard?

Please do not compare who someone is passively (of latin origin) with what they say and do (racist tirades). It’s super weaksauce and existentially inauthentic.

[paralipsis]

@shaddack

So it is The Right Thing to live in a panopticon with elephant-grade memory? To suddenly suffer consequences for all the slips people got away with for hundreds years before? To guard one’s mouth at all times, never get angry, never slip, never make a “wrong” joke?

It was said behind the Iron Curtain that the worst kind of censorship is self-censorship.

Free speech has never meant consequence free speech, ever. Can there be overreaction to something someone says off-handedly? Most certainly, and we as a society have to try to keep that in check. The mob can, and often is wrong, but it’s something humans always do. Legislating against it would itself be an actual imposition upon free speech. But if one presumes language can have a positive impact, then it necessarily can have a negative one as well. This guy didn’t make some off-handed comment though, he engaged in a direct verbal attack designed to do harm to the target of his tirade. Whatever grey area exists between overreaction and appropriate sanction, this guy is a long way from the hazy area.

The idea that I should be concerned that racists are forced to self-censor and not call black people n*****s and monkeys to their face is not one I can find a way to entertain. Unless I am supremely odd, I have to assume that we all think some fairly dumb and hurtful things, and rationally self-censor them because we do not intend harm to another person, or are potentially just afraid of the riposte, whether verbal or physical. Some thoughts really do deserve to be censored inside one’s head and not shared with the world, where they inevitably just make it a worse place.

[shaddack]

@gracchus

Phonecams aren’t going away. The Internet isn’t going away. Privacy is still up for grabs, and whether you’re talking about pseudonymous comment sections or your own unmonitored home that’s what we should be fighting for. I have very little sympathy for people who willingly and affirmatively give up their privacy and suffer the consequences, like this moron did.

To defend the privacy of your home and the pseudonymity of your avatars, you may like to provide some long-range artillery support to the people shelled at the perimeter. If they lose their ground, the battle front will move to your windows.

If you don’t like them, don’t make them win, fine with me - but if you like what you still got, you should also not let them lose.

[anon34697667]

@albill

Ignored it unless I saw evidence of issues in the workplace or had a workplace complaint.

Well, those would probably be the among the opening remarks from lawyers representing employees suing you for workplace discrimination and a hostile work environment, because you knew of this employee’s behavior and did nothing about it, so the employees felt you either shared/condoned those views or gave them tacit approval. You might also get a lot of dropped business and have a hard time attracting new clients who don’t like racial slurs. I imagine people would also respond on social media with boycotts, so you’d probably need to bring in a savvy PR team to handle that mess, and their first recommendation would be for you to fire the racist asshole.

Or, you could save your company a lot of embarrassment, legal and PR fees, client relationships, money, and generate some goodwill by demonstrating the importance of–and your commitment to–inclusion, diversity, and equality, by immediately firing the racist asshole.

Mr. Pisone is now free to start his own landscaping company and I’m looking forward to his attempts at attracting new clients.

[anon68952647]

Is it really amazing that unpopular speech makes you… unpopular?

Really?

[enso]

Your hypothetical doesn’t apply to my work. I work in silicon valley managing an engineering team in three countries. We don’t have trucks or sites.

[nimelennar]

I believe that this guy had every right to use his freedom of speech in the manner he did.

I also believe that his employer has every right to use their freedom of association to not be associated with someone who behaves this way.

[Sqarr]

Hey, John Pisone: Get a job, you fucking racist parasite.

[enso]

@paralipsis

The idea that I should be concerned that racists are forced to self-censor and not call black people n*****s and monkeys to their face is not one I can find a way to entertain.

Except no one is asking you too. You’re focusing on the one instance and not on the implications as a general case. I think you know that too, which makes it a cheap debate trick here.

[enso]

I don’t work in a business that “attracts clients.”

@M_Dub

Or, you could save your company a lot of embarrassment, legal and PR fees, client relationships, money, and generate some goodwill by demonstrating the importance of–and your commitment to–inclusion, diversity, and equality, by immediately firing the racist asshole.

Seems like an asshole thought police move. It isn’t my business if an employee is a racist unless it becomes an issue at work.

[anon68952647]

I also manage engineers, their trucks contain things like radars and drills and chemistry labs. They’re professionals.

Who they are while not at work isn’t my business unless and until they make a client feel threatened.

What do you do when someone who works for you plausibly causes someone else to feel fear and discomfort? How do you handle that? Do you explain to your customers that they are wrong to feel that way.

If so, how does might invalidating clients work out for you?

[William_Holz]

@albill

So if I go to a street protest, like the Occupy ones that we had here in Oakland, and my employer finds out about it because I wind up in a youtube video of it, it’s cool if they fire me?

That’s basically what people are justifying here.

No, it’s not.

This man is not meeting the minimum threshold to be considered a civilized adult by any measure other than the technicality of being old. No person who isn’t awful behaves that way, and we shouldn’t be supporting that technicality and trying to conflate it with other fully legitimate adult behaviors that deserve to be respected. Otherwise we have a race to the bottom and people treating this bullshit behavior like it’s appropriate.

That is in no way comparable to protesting to help others or even doing wacky-but-harmless things on your own time.

[paralipsis]

@albill

Except no one is asking you too. You’re focusing on the one instance and not on the implications as a general case. I think you know that too, which makes it a cheap debate trick here.

No I am not.

[quote=“paralipsis, post:85, topic:71400”]
Whatever grey area exists between overreaction and appropriate sanction, this guy is a long way from the hazy area.[/quote][quote=“paralipsis, post:85, topic:71400”]
Can there be overreaction to something someone says off-handedly? Most certainly, and we as a society have to try to keep that in check.[/quote]
My point is that free speech absolutism is just as dumb as overt controls over what we can and can’t say.

Speech can be a weapon. It can do harm. The idea that such harm can never be without consequence is impractical in the extreme. I hold this guy up as a shining example of someone way past wherever the boundary is that needs to be debated, not as a generalisation.

[enso]

@AcerPlatanoides

What do you do when someone who works for you plausibly causes someone else to feel fear and discomfort? How do you handle that? Do you explain to your customers that they are wrong to feel that way.

I don’t have customers. I have an employer.

If there are complaints about an employee that I manage, I talk to them, possibly with our HR rep in the room if it seems warranted. That’s why we have HR. That’s assuming it is a workplace complaint.

If it is a complaint outside of work by a non-employee about behavior on their own time, if it isn’t illegal in a way the company cares about, I doubt it is my issue.

[anon34697667]

@albill

I don’t work in a business that “attracts clients.”

In the situation we’re discussing, and in the question I asked, they/you do.

It isn’t my business if an employee is a racist unless it becomes an issue at work.

Actually, it is. In this case, Mr. Pisone acted in a way that brought his racism to his workplace, so his racism became a workplace issue.

[enso]

I was asked what I would do as a manager. I said what I would do. I don’t work in landscaping and don’t do deal in hypotheticals of doing so.

I do mange six people and a contractor so I can say how’d I’d react as a manager, which is that it isn’t my fucking business unless there is a workplace complaint. I don’t know what my folks do outside of work, mostly, and I don’t need to know. What they do at work with coworkers is my business.

[anon62122146]

I certainly don’t post here under my real name…