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In the case I'm talking about, the gentleman in question threw a chair out a window halfway through a meeting. This after months of threatening violence against

In the case I'm talking about, the gentleman in question threw a chair out a window halfway through a meeting. This after months of threatening violence against co-workers after showing up to work drunk. You bet your ass I asked for him to be fired. He wasn't, so I quit. I'm very sorry that my post rubbed you the wrong way. My intention is simply to suggest that we shouldn't tolerate antisocial behavior in our communities, and that we should ask those behaving badly to stop. Do you disagree?

wccrawford 15y ago
I definitely agree that antisocial behavior should be noticed and handled. I don't agree with asking a coworker to be fired. Alerting your manager that the situation is intolerable is perfectly cool. Demanding that someone be fired just isn't. (This applies to customers demanding employees to be fired, too.) If the offense is really that serious, the manager already knows how to handle it. If he has a history of these things, again, the manager knows and can deal with it. There is a chain of command in place for a reason. It's your right to quit whenever you want, for whatever reason you want. I don't argue with that. I would probably refuse to work with the chair-thrower, too, out of safety concerns. But I wouldn't demand he be fired.
sophacles 15y ago
I disagree with your lumping "drunken violent chair throwing" into a the exact same catagory as "guy who sarcastically responds to a person not reading the documentation". Really, extreme reactions like 0-tolerance are no better than tolerance for the extreme misbehavior you describe. I propose that a large portion of the reaction against your statements is that until this comment, many or most of the people assumed you meant a more common form of asshole: e.g. the guy who defends his code too hard, or the guy who isn't good at criticizing others' work. The term asshole, at least as used by large numbers of people, applies to both cases. Getting someone fired because they are a bit caustic is not at all an appropriate reaction, whereas as a response to violence it is (probably) an appropriate reaction.

wccrawford 15y ago

I definitely agree that antisocial behavior should be noticed and handled. I don't agree with asking a coworker to be fired. Alerting your manager that the situation is intolerable is perfectly cool. Demanding that someone be fired just isn't. (This applies to customers demanding employees to be fired, too.) If the offense is really that serious, the manager already knows how to handle it. If he has a history of these things, again, the manager knows and can deal with it. There is a chain of command in place for a reason. It's your right to quit whenever you want, for whatever reason you want. I don't argue with that. I would probably refuse to work with the chair-thrower, too, out of safety concerns. But I wouldn't demand he be fired.

sophacles 15y ago

I disagree with your lumping "drunken violent chair throwing" into a the exact same catagory as "guy who sarcastically responds to a person not reading the documentation". Really, extreme reactions like 0-tolerance are no better than tolerance for the extreme misbehavior you describe. I propose that a large portion of the reaction against your statements is that until this comment, many or most of the people assumed you meant a more common form of asshole: e.g. the guy who defends his code too hard, or the guy who isn't good at criticizing others' work. The term asshole, at least as used by large numbers of people, applies to both cases. Getting someone fired because they are a bit caustic is not at all an appropriate reaction, whereas as a response to violence it is (probably) an appropriate reaction.