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“the individual responsible for this regrettable act is no longer with the company.” Technically correct. The best kind of correct. They hired him a couple o

• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• chrisseaton 4y ago
  > They hired him a couple of weeks later. Says that in the article.
• silisili 4y ago
  I got a laugh out of that. It makes me wonder how many 'no longer with the company' replies to mobs are similarly a technicality. Like, giving an employee unpaid leave until the mob dies down.
  • deanCommie 4y ago
    > Like, giving an employee unpaid leave until the mob dies down. All the time. But, usually, that's not a laughable or desirable outcome. This is how bad cops who commit civil liberty violations or use excessive force continue to work for decades, or are eventually sidelined but continue to receive a salary. While in this specific case we can excuse an intern who definitely didn't know better, and ultimately nobody was harmed, we shouldn't minimize or normalize administrative technicalities as a way to get away from outrage.
    • dolni 4y ago
      Our entire justice system exists "as a way to get away from outrage" and we're better off for it. Angry mobs don't produce good outcomes. That's true even when they're angry about bad cops.
      • Spivak 4y ago
        Angry mobs are a signal of our justice system either having a gap or otherwise not working. The whole point of having a justice system at all is to transform mob rule into a dialog so when mobs form it’s usually because justice isn’t being served. You don’t see people showing up at a murderer’s house with pitchforks or workers breaking down the doors of factory owners because we have laws that (roughly) enforce the outcomes the people want. Angry mobs produce fantastic outcomes at identifying when the justice system’s outcomes fall outside of the norms they’re supposed to be enforcing but they’re terrible at functioning as judge and jury in individual cases.
        • b112 4y ago
          Angry mobs are a signal of our justice system either having a gap or otherwise not working. Lately, most angry mobs start on twitter/facebook, and often are based upon exaggerations or lies, and have the aide of twitter/facebook amplification effects, which purposefully try to fan anger to drive more engagement.
        • fleddr 4y ago
          "Angry mobs are a signal of our justice system either having a gap or otherwise not working" Or...radicalized always-online bullies that simply takes joy in taking a political opponent down.
        • andrewflnr 4y ago
          Angry mobs are a signal of humans being stupid pack animals. It's sheer luck if they coalesce around a good cause.
          • somat 4y ago
            My threshold for whether a mob is legitimate is looting, I have no tolerance for your cause if your mob starts looting. Note however that police stations and capital buildings are a fair target.
            • 4y ago
    • CodeBeater 4y ago
      I think that in most scenarios it's fair to assume that public servants (especially those wielding force) should be held to higher standards.
      • zaccusl 4y ago
        This is what so many people miss. Any time you have power over the public (e.g., a cop), or present yourself as an expert in a way the affects the public (e.g., a medical doctor, civil engineer, politician) then by default you should be held to a much higher standard than the general public. There should be very little room for error or mistake and all errors/mistakes should be scrutinized for malpractice. The burden should be on the expert to prove they are qualified and should be allowed ("licensed") to hold the position. If you can't handle that then find another profession.
    • vba616 4y ago
      Seems like there are many parallel universes. In one of them, people who do bad things or even crimes, may be forbidden to do certain kinds of jobs, but the generally agreed-upon ethical framework says that discrimination is only permissible when the crime or malfeasance directly relates to job responsibilities. For instance, it might be considered too risky to hire someone with a history of DWIs as a driver, or someone convicted of embezzlement to work in finance. In that universe, there are even laws against discrimination that is unconnected to the offense.
  • justin_oaks 4y ago
    That'd be a clever attempt at damage control, but in today's world the truth would probably would get leaked. Then the company would have to deal with the fallout from that. I'd rather have the people who run companies grow a spine and stand up to the mob. They should put out a message like "We will investigate this incident. We take the decision to fire people seriously and will make a decision that is best for this company." In essence, "We hear all you loud-mouths, but we get to decide whether to fire people, not you."
    • tablespoon 4y ago
      > That'd be a clever attempt at damage control, but in today's world the truth would probably would get leaked. Then the company would have to deal with the fallout from that. The mob is loud, but it has a short attention span. The truth probably would get leaked, but (depending on the issue) the mob would likely have moved on to the next thing by then. > I'd rather have the people who run companies grow a spine and stand up to the mob. They should put out a message like "We will investigate this incident. We take the decision to fire people seriously and will make a decision that is best for this company." That's probably an all around better response, too. Just "investigate" and give no updates until the controversy is old news.
    • no-reply 4y ago
      If the team in question is the police, "we investigated ourselves and found nothing wrong."
      • kodah 4y ago
        • laszlojamf 4y ago
          I don't know, it's pretty on topic, isn't it? This is the problem other big companies, e.g. banks and oil companies etc who get caught with the hand in the cookie jar. There's clearly a line where the company _shouldn't_ get to perform its own investigation. Maybe not for flipping some customers the bird, but I'm not sure whether or not it's legal cuts it either as a line. There are a lot of things you can do which are not illegal but which might warrant a mob. Obviously, again, not for some intern prank. I feel the police is the perfect example for when you don't want the "team" to decide if they did something wrong.
  • blowski 4y ago
    Apparently, this used to be a thing in department stores. If someone complained, the manager would make a deal out of “firing” the scapegoat employee and the customer would be happy.
    • ericmcer 4y ago
      What kind of psycho feels satisfied when someone loses their job. Unless the offense was like… spitting in my food or something actually dangerous I would feel bad if my complaint about general negligence or attitude resulted in someone losing their job.
      • Aissen 4y ago
        In fact it can be used as a pressure strategy to customers that do have empathy. Those might complain a bit less loud when you let them know you might have to fire someone.
      • cogman10 4y ago
        I feel the same way. However, some people are more "eye for an eye" types and nothing makes them feel better than seeing someone punished that "wrongs" them. There are more than a few people that fetishize punitive actions for evil doers.
      • eyelidlessness 4y ago
        I totally agree (with your conclusion), and I even go out of my way to give higher praise than deserved to workers to help shield them from it. Unfortunately, it’s not (always) customers’ fault that this is how it works. Increasingly, it’s not even knowable by customers that they may contribute to someone’s firing (or even be the only input!). A single mediocre review could end a job, depending on how it’s weighted. A few bad reviews almost guarantees it. Even if the customer has no idea their review is applied to that particular worker—i.e. if they think they’re reviewing the business. Knowing all this has also just generally helped me to be more patient with people when I’m on the other side of the “counter”. But a lot of people (a) don’t know it and (b) don’t have any other recourse. A specific example so I don’t sound like I’m just abstracting the whole thing: if I order a meal on Grubhub, when I get asked for a review I get very specific questions about the delivery driver, vague questions about food quality from the vendor, and no prompt about Grubhub’s service itself. When I’ve had poor service (always from Grubhub or a direct consequence of their poor service), there isn’t even a way to give feedback that goes beyond the CS front line. Those poor souls are tasked with issuing refunds as rapidly as possible and moving on to the next chat. The best anyone can do to even register a complaint that might be heard is to call out a driver or restaurant, even if neither did anything wrong. Customers don’t know they’ll probably get someone fired by taking this tack, they just know it’s the only way to be heard. And that’s not because they’re cruel, it’s because they’re horribly alienated from the thousands of tiny paper cuts they understand as conveniences, and some days their only options.
  • wincy 4y ago
    My wife used to work for a mom and pop shop in New York. Had about 50 employees, and most of the work was talking to customers and contractors in the phone all over the US. One day a customer threw a fit about my wife. The manager assured the customer she would be fired, and that was that. Manager turns to my wife and says “your name is Rachel now”. So that’s how she’d answer the phone from then on.
  • hsbauauvhabzb 4y ago
    I think viral PR backlash would scare people away from this in anything but the most benign situations. That, and I’m sure HR would take issue with it (both for legal implications, and meta reasons).
  • Thorrez 4y ago
    There was a police shooting where the officer that did the shooting was fired, then secretly rehired 2 years later, then retired 42 days later with a pension. The public only found out a year after that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver#Bankruptcy_and_pension https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shooting_of_Daniel_Shaver#Bank...
    • retSava 4y ago
      Ah man, I saw the bodycam footage from that incident. That scarred me, it's NSFL. I've previously seen many bodycams which to me changed the view on what american LEO (can) meet on a daily basis, and the zero-time switch from a completely docile event to a deadly encounter. This made me change how I look on us leo's often hardball and pseudo-militarian approach to such encounters, because there are so many weapons in everyday society and people willing to use them against leo's. This Shaver encounter is not one of those. There were multiple rifles pointed at him, who was alone, drunk and terrified. You could clearly hear it from his voice, and he was completely compliant to the best of his abilities. The officer in charge was going all-in Rambo on him and did nothing to calm the situation. All his commands was balls-to-the-walls aggressive and multiple threats to Shavers life. The commands was confusing, even to me all sober behind a screen, and to drunk Shaver they must've been greek. He was in panic. Imo the officer giving commands, and the officer shooting, should both be considered guilty of manslaughter. They should not be allowed with guns, much less leo's.
• winphone1974 4y ago
  That's a great manager IMO. as is the discussion around if this should be an off-by-one or bad pointer error