10 ms·

“UnGoogley”? Worker says she was fired for questioning no holiday pay

62 points by jeffthechimp 5y ago

ykevinator2 5y ago
She works for a sub, that's why they pay the premium, to insulate. This is sorta dumb.
- samhw 5y ago
  It's entirely dumb. She was fired by the company she contracted for, not by Google. No Google employee had any involvement in that decision. The sole reason that the word 'Google' is attached to this article - and to her complaints - is because it generates more publicity. It's also very unclear where the "unGoogley" wording comes from. The article doesn't directly attribute it to anyone in her company, much less in Google, though it does everything else it possibly can to insinuate that one of her overlings said it. My hunch is that the quote is actually from her.
knorker 5y ago
I know it's not unheard of, but i have never in my career been offered extra money for working holidays. I think it's the right thing to do, both for the worker and for the business (don't want grumpy workers on the holidays), but yeah if you throw a tantrum (?) for not getting a perk, then that sounds ungoogley.
- ctrl-j 5y ago
  Every union job I've had holiday pay, and every white collar job has paid time off for holidays. In my life the only jobs that skipped holiday pay were hypercapitalist organizations that didn't have a unionized workforce and didn't compensate people for their time humanely.
  - knorker 5y ago
    Good for you. Good for the companies you worked for. None of mine have. And like i replied to elsewhere no, none of my jobs have been in the US.
- dustintrex 5y ago
  In virtually the entire developed world outside the US, holiday pay is a given. In some countries like Switzerland you literally need to apply to the government for permission to work Sundays.
  - ger768 5y ago
    I worked many jobs here in US and they all had holiday pay. So if I worked I would get paid 1.5x and if I didn't work I would still get paid as if I did. Not supporting the idea that anyone is entitled to this, but saying it is not uncommon. I think it is regional within the US and maybe depends if you are hourly or salary based.
    - lotsofpulp 5y ago
      It depends on how deep the employer's pockets are and what supply and demand looks like for the type of labor. Fast food workers, small retail businesses, franchised hotels, all do not typically get holiday pay. Generally, the lower the income, the lower the chance of holiday pay.
    - denton-scratch 5y ago
      That seems unfair. If you get paid time-off, then that is paid at your normal rate of pay, and you don't have to work for it. If you work one day during your PTO, then surely that work should be compensated at your daily rate of pay, in addition to your pay for time-off. Why should you work a day at half-pay? So working during paid time-off should be compensated at double-time. Time-and-a-half was customary in the UK for overtime, in the days of trades unions. The opportunity to work overtime was prized, and in fact sometimes workers would "go slow" during normal time, to ensure there was enough work left for overtime. Nobody worked normal hours that included public holidays, so those hours were compensated at double time. Christmas Day would sometimes command triple-time.
  - bradleyjg 5y ago
    How about Japan?
- hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  Yeah, in most parts of the world national holidays are holidays because you don't have to work without worrying you won't be paid for that day. If you have a Bezos-like mindset, it may seems stupid and inefficient, but this is short-sighted. Having holidays where - irrespective of other PTO, which is very scarce in the USA - you can reunite with your family or just be alone if you prefer, spend time doing what you love etc, gives you the reason to go back to work. Otherwise, if you just work for the sake of working, what's the point? You just get older and die. Maybe if you're one of the lucky ones and have a job that gives you 100% satisfaction and inspiration all of the time, it might not matter that much, but most people don't have jobs like that, and even if it seems so, it may change with time. You Americans need to stand up and fight for your rights.
  - knorker 5y ago
    I entirely agree with everything except... > You Americans I'm not American, and none of the countries i have worked in are the US. I have only worked in socialist Europe. Now what? Like I said I think it's silly to not pay more during holidays. Never having worked in the US of course "thanksgiving" specifically has never been a thing.
roenxi 5y ago
The article doesn't do this directly, but to push back against the implicit message: Google directly employs 2 orders of magnitude more people than live in my suburb. It is meaningless - completely meaningless - to hold up one example of a subcontractor as some sort of general case. Especially without context, there is probably more to the story that didn't make the article. Also my condolences to this woman if her parents named her Tuesday.
- willcipriano 5y ago
  > Also my condolences to this woman if her parents named her Tuesday. Tuesday Carne, I think it's a play on Taco Tuesday?
  - C19is20 5y ago
    ...Tuesday's gone with the wind?
  - mc32 5y ago
    Could be alternate spelling of the Carney surname.
- leephillips 5y ago
  There was a famous actress with that as a stage name: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001839/ https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001839/
- MrDunham 5y ago
  One thing I very much appreciate about the hacker news community are comments like this. I didn’t read the article but clicked in of the comments “knowing” they be stuffed with Reddit like fury. “How dare they!” I was wrong… Like usual. It seems this community is significantly less jump-to-outrage prone than many others (eg. much of Reddit). We still let the marketing-engineered clickbait headlines slip through (since they are the actual articles’ titles) - such as the title of this post. But still, some of the least outrage-y responses on the internet. Thank you Reonxi and thank you HN community. Edit: spelling (more bloody autocorrect fails)
ziml77 5y ago
Do people typically get paid more for working on holidays? I can't say I've heard of that but I've also always been salaried, where extra work is not directly compensated.
- legutierr 5y ago
  I ran a call center some years ago, and I would pay people double the hourly rate to work on holidays. I always saw it as the “not an asshole” thing to do. I also didn’t fire people for just bring up the question of their pay.
  - ziml77 5y ago
    It's the good thing to do for sure! Not surprising that Google doesn't give a shit though, especially for contract workers.
- Maskawanian 5y ago
  Yes, in Canada you are paid double time for Statutory holidays.
  - ziml77 5y ago
    Sorry, I should have specified the US. I don't think we have any holidays that companies are required to give employees off.
    - nickthegreek 5y ago
      Normally it’s time and a half on federal holidays for hourly workers in the US.
  - chrisseaton 5y ago
    How does that work for a salaried person?
    - makeitdouble 5y ago
chriscjcj 5y ago
The article's author, Jeff Elder, writes: > Now, I don’t know about you, but I have three reactions to this: Now, I don’t know about you, but I have one reaction to this: you're a newspaper reporter, Jeff. State the facts; I don't care about your opinion.
- legutierr 5y ago
  You are reading this article for free on the internet. Provided that his employer is OK with it, he can do whatever he wants.
- prpl 5y ago
  you are obviously unfamiliar with the examiner
  - lelandfe 5y ago
    The line “I don’t know what ‘unGoogley’ means” should tell you everything you need to know
- sokoloff 5y ago
  I don’t think this tweet is the original source, but it was the only source I could find. https://mobile.twitter.com/ryanafournier/status/1087766048584204288 https://mobile.twitter.com/ryanafournier/status/108776604858... > The news used to tell you that something happened, then you had to decide what you thought about it. > Now the news tells you how to think about something, and you have to decided if it even happened.
  - beebeepka 5y ago
    Was it ever any different, though? I know it looks like things have changed like your quote days but the question remains. Having trust in something does not make it true
    - MrDunham 5y ago
      See the book “Trust me, I’m lying” to see how the US journeyed from ad & attention driven media (yellow journalism) to subscription/brand driven journalism (The New York Times was one of the first with “all the news that’s fit to print”), back to ad/attention driven journalism on steroids (the internet + Google news and Facebook - though less for FB since the algorithm updates). It’s a great/terrifying book and I’ve personally witnessed the results Edit: To clarify, I point this out because there was a good 80ish years where journalism was less about grabbing and holding your attention and more about maintaining subscribers. Since it was very hard to maintain subscribers if you just kept throwing click bait and half-accurate news at them, it helped improve their accuracy.
ancientsofmumu 5y ago
These two links have more substance: https://www.latintimes.com/find-out-why-google-employee-lost-her-job-9-days-after-joining-497188 https://www.latintimes.com/find-out-why-google-employee-lost... https://www.protocol.com/workplace/google-contractor-fired-ungoogley-behavior https://www.protocol.com/workplace/google-contractor-fired-u...
jeffbee 5y ago
What is the apparent connection between having purple hair and being disgruntled at work? If you look at the Alphabet Workers Union "who we are" page the rate of artificially dyed hair is like 5 orders of magnitude above the background rate. Is it cause or effect? Does the dye poison your brain?
4WIW 5y ago
The Alphabet Workers Union members are of course OK with paying twice the price in restaurants and in stores outside of the normal working hours.
onion2k 5y ago
Regardless of whether you think people should be paid extra for working on a holiday, or whether you think its right that a union is helping this person, what should be immediately obvious is that firing someone for questioning a policy is completely wrong.
- hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
  It also should be immediately obvious that this is one person's story, with no information from the other side, amongst tens of thousands of employees.
  - SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
    > It also should be immediately obvious that this is one person's story, with no information from the other side, I had an employee that was an insufferable asshole. Breaking his NDA. Not doing good work. Late. Running a scam raffle “for” his sick kid. Etc. We fired him for the first reason we could that wouldn’t get us a lawsuit. He runs around to this day bad-mouthing us because we fire people for the tiniest of infractions. It was a lot easier to prove he damaged company property than it was to fight a year for three lawsuit that involved patent and NDA laws. Not saying that is what happened here, because I don’t know. Just a totally unrelated anecdote.
- brandmeyer 5y ago
  Depends. In other reports, she has admitted that they way she questioned the policy was by cussing out her supervisor. She had been on the job for less than two weeks. Given those additional facts, I don't have very much sympathy for her position.
  - sokoloff 5y ago
    Given that, I don’t know if it’s the first but I strongly suspect this is not the last time she’ll suffer such an “injustice”.
    - 5y ago

62 points by jeffthechimp 5y ago

ykevinator2 5y ago

She works for a sub, that's why they pay the premium, to insulate. This is sorta dumb.

samhw 5y ago
It's entirely dumb. She was fired by the company she contracted for, not by Google. No Google employee had any involvement in that decision. The sole reason that the word 'Google' is attached to this article - and to her complaints - is because it generates more publicity. It's also very unclear where the "unGoogley" wording comes from. The article doesn't directly attribute it to anyone in her company, much less in Google, though it does everything else it possibly can to insinuate that one of her overlings said it. My hunch is that the quote is actually from her.

knorker 5y ago

I know it's not unheard of, but i have never in my career been offered extra money for working holidays. I think it's the right thing to do, both for the worker and for the business (don't want grumpy workers on the holidays), but yeah if you throw a tantrum (?) for not getting a perk, then that sounds ungoogley.

ctrl-j 5y ago
Every union job I've had holiday pay, and every white collar job has paid time off for holidays. In my life the only jobs that skipped holiday pay were hypercapitalist organizations that didn't have a unionized workforce and didn't compensate people for their time humanely.
- knorker 5y ago
  Good for you. Good for the companies you worked for. None of mine have. And like i replied to elsewhere no, none of my jobs have been in the US.
dustintrex 5y ago
In virtually the entire developed world outside the US, holiday pay is a given. In some countries like Switzerland you literally need to apply to the government for permission to work Sundays.
- ger768 5y ago
  I worked many jobs here in US and they all had holiday pay. So if I worked I would get paid 1.5x and if I didn't work I would still get paid as if I did. Not supporting the idea that anyone is entitled to this, but saying it is not uncommon. I think it is regional within the US and maybe depends if you are hourly or salary based.
  - lotsofpulp 5y ago
    It depends on how deep the employer's pockets are and what supply and demand looks like for the type of labor. Fast food workers, small retail businesses, franchised hotels, all do not typically get holiday pay. Generally, the lower the income, the lower the chance of holiday pay.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    That seems unfair. If you get paid time-off, then that is paid at your normal rate of pay, and you don't have to work for it. If you work one day during your PTO, then surely that work should be compensated at your daily rate of pay, in addition to your pay for time-off. Why should you work a day at half-pay? So working during paid time-off should be compensated at double-time. Time-and-a-half was customary in the UK for overtime, in the days of trades unions. The opportunity to work overtime was prized, and in fact sometimes workers would "go slow" during normal time, to ensure there was enough work left for overtime. Nobody worked normal hours that included public holidays, so those hours were compensated at double time. Christmas Day would sometimes command triple-time.
- bradleyjg 5y ago
  How about Japan?
hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
Yeah, in most parts of the world national holidays are holidays because you don't have to work without worrying you won't be paid for that day. If you have a Bezos-like mindset, it may seems stupid and inefficient, but this is short-sighted. Having holidays where - irrespective of other PTO, which is very scarce in the USA - you can reunite with your family or just be alone if you prefer, spend time doing what you love etc, gives you the reason to go back to work. Otherwise, if you just work for the sake of working, what's the point? You just get older and die. Maybe if you're one of the lucky ones and have a job that gives you 100% satisfaction and inspiration all of the time, it might not matter that much, but most people don't have jobs like that, and even if it seems so, it may change with time. You Americans need to stand up and fight for your rights.
- knorker 5y ago
  I entirely agree with everything except... > You Americans I'm not American, and none of the countries i have worked in are the US. I have only worked in socialist Europe. Now what? Like I said I think it's silly to not pay more during holidays. Never having worked in the US of course "thanksgiving" specifically has never been a thing.

roenxi 5y ago

The article doesn't do this directly, but to push back against the implicit message: Google directly employs 2 orders of magnitude more people than live in my suburb. It is meaningless - completely meaningless - to hold up one example of a subcontractor as some sort of general case. Especially without context, there is probably more to the story that didn't make the article. Also my condolences to this woman if her parents named her Tuesday.

willcipriano 5y ago
> Also my condolences to this woman if her parents named her Tuesday. Tuesday Carne, I think it's a play on Taco Tuesday?
- C19is20 5y ago
  ...Tuesday's gone with the wind?
- mc32 5y ago
  Could be alternate spelling of the Carney surname.
leephillips 5y ago
There was a famous actress with that as a stage name: https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001839/ https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001839/
MrDunham 5y ago
One thing I very much appreciate about the hacker news community are comments like this. I didn’t read the article but clicked in of the comments “knowing” they be stuffed with Reddit like fury. “How dare they!” I was wrong… Like usual. It seems this community is significantly less jump-to-outrage prone than many others (eg. much of Reddit). We still let the marketing-engineered clickbait headlines slip through (since they are the actual articles’ titles) - such as the title of this post. But still, some of the least outrage-y responses on the internet. Thank you Reonxi and thank you HN community. Edit: spelling (more bloody autocorrect fails)

ziml77 5y ago

Do people typically get paid more for working on holidays? I can't say I've heard of that but I've also always been salaried, where extra work is not directly compensated.

legutierr 5y ago
I ran a call center some years ago, and I would pay people double the hourly rate to work on holidays. I always saw it as the “not an asshole” thing to do. I also didn’t fire people for just bring up the question of their pay.
- ziml77 5y ago
  It's the good thing to do for sure! Not surprising that Google doesn't give a shit though, especially for contract workers.
Maskawanian 5y ago
Yes, in Canada you are paid double time for Statutory holidays.
- ziml77 5y ago
  Sorry, I should have specified the US. I don't think we have any holidays that companies are required to give employees off.
  - nickthegreek 5y ago
    Normally it’s time and a half on federal holidays for hourly workers in the US.
- chrisseaton 5y ago
  How does that work for a salaried person?
  - makeitdouble 5y ago

chriscjcj 5y ago

The article's author, Jeff Elder, writes: > Now, I don’t know about you, but I have three reactions to this: Now, I don’t know about you, but I have one reaction to this: you're a newspaper reporter, Jeff. State the facts; I don't care about your opinion.

legutierr 5y ago
You are reading this article for free on the internet. Provided that his employer is OK with it, he can do whatever he wants.
prpl 5y ago
you are obviously unfamiliar with the examiner
- lelandfe 5y ago
  The line “I don’t know what ‘unGoogley’ means” should tell you everything you need to know
sokoloff 5y ago
I don’t think this tweet is the original source, but it was the only source I could find. https://mobile.twitter.com/ryanafournier/status/1087766048584204288 https://mobile.twitter.com/ryanafournier/status/108776604858... > The news used to tell you that something happened, then you had to decide what you thought about it. > Now the news tells you how to think about something, and you have to decided if it even happened.
- beebeepka 5y ago
  Was it ever any different, though? I know it looks like things have changed like your quote days but the question remains. Having trust in something does not make it true
  - MrDunham 5y ago
    See the book “Trust me, I’m lying” to see how the US journeyed from ad & attention driven media (yellow journalism) to subscription/brand driven journalism (The New York Times was one of the first with “all the news that’s fit to print”), back to ad/attention driven journalism on steroids (the internet + Google news and Facebook - though less for FB since the algorithm updates). It’s a great/terrifying book and I’ve personally witnessed the results Edit: To clarify, I point this out because there was a good 80ish years where journalism was less about grabbing and holding your attention and more about maintaining subscribers. Since it was very hard to maintain subscribers if you just kept throwing click bait and half-accurate news at them, it helped improve their accuracy.

ancientsofmumu 5y ago

These two links have more substance: https://www.latintimes.com/find-out-why-google-employee-lost-her-job-9-days-after-joining-497188 https://www.latintimes.com/find-out-why-google-employee-lost... https://www.protocol.com/workplace/google-contractor-fired-ungoogley-behavior https://www.protocol.com/workplace/google-contractor-fired-u...

jeffbee 5y ago

What is the apparent connection between having purple hair and being disgruntled at work? If you look at the Alphabet Workers Union "who we are" page the rate of artificially dyed hair is like 5 orders of magnitude above the background rate. Is it cause or effect? Does the dye poison your brain?

4WIW 5y ago

The Alphabet Workers Union members are of course OK with paying twice the price in restaurants and in stores outside of the normal working hours.

onion2k 5y ago

Regardless of whether you think people should be paid extra for working on a holiday, or whether you think its right that a union is helping this person, what should be immediately obvious is that firing someone for questioning a policy is completely wrong.

hn_throwaway_99 5y ago
It also should be immediately obvious that this is one person's story, with no information from the other side, amongst tens of thousands of employees.
- SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
  > It also should be immediately obvious that this is one person's story, with no information from the other side, I had an employee that was an insufferable asshole. Breaking his NDA. Not doing good work. Late. Running a scam raffle “for” his sick kid. Etc. We fired him for the first reason we could that wouldn’t get us a lawsuit. He runs around to this day bad-mouthing us because we fire people for the tiniest of infractions. It was a lot easier to prove he damaged company property than it was to fight a year for three lawsuit that involved patent and NDA laws. Not saying that is what happened here, because I don’t know. Just a totally unrelated anecdote.
brandmeyer 5y ago
Depends. In other reports, she has admitted that they way she questioned the policy was by cussing out her supervisor. She had been on the job for less than two weeks. Given those additional facts, I don't have very much sympathy for her position.
- sokoloff 5y ago
  Given that, I don’t know if it’s the first but I strongly suspect this is not the last time she’ll suffer such an “injustice”.
  - 5y ago