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French man wins right to not be ‘fun’ at work in wrongful termination case
- Markoff 4y agoThe consultant was fired after refusing to take part in activities he called ‘humiliating and intrusive,’ according to court filing France’s highest court has ruled that a man fired by a Paris-based consulting firm for allegedly failing to be “fun” enough at work was wrongfully dismissed. The man, referred to in court documents as Mr. T, was fired from Cubik Partners in 2015 after refusing to take part in seminars and weekend social events that his lawyers argued, according to court documents, included “excessive alcoholism” and “promiscuity.” Mr. T had argued that the “fun” culture in the company involved “humiliating and intrusive practices” including mock sexual acts, crude nicknames and obliging him to share his bed with another employee during work functions. In its judgment this month, the Court of Cassation ruled that the man was entitled to “freedom of expression” and that refusing to participate in social activities was a “fundamental freedom” under labor and human rights laws, and not grounds for his dismissal. According to the court documents, the man was hired by Cubik Partners as a senior consultant in February 2011 and promoted to director in February 2014. He was fired for “professional incompetence” in March 2015 for allegedly failing to adhere to the firm’s convivial values. The company also criticized his sometimes “brittle and demotivating tone” toward subordinates, and alleged inability to accept feedback and differing points of view. Cubik Partners did not immediately respond to a request from The Washington Post for comment. It is not the first time a company’s drinking culture has come under the microscope in court proceedings. A number of recent incidents have highlighted the entrenchment of alcohol in white-collar professional culture, even after the #MeToo movement shone a spotlight on workplace misconduct globally. Some firms have introduced “booze chaperones” at company events in hopes of avoiding such issues. An auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers in England sued the company over severe injuries he sustained at a work event that “made a competitive virtue” of “excessive” drinking, in a lawsuit filed in London’s High Court this year. Michael Brockie went into a coma and had part of his skull removed after participating in the company event, The Post reported. In March, insurance marketplace Lloyd’s of London fined member firm Atrium Underwriters a record 1 million pounds (about $1.2 million) for “serious failures,” including a “boys’ night out” where employees, including two senior executives, “took part in inappropriate initiation games and heavy drinking, and made sexual comments about female colleagues,” the Guardian reported at the time. France is among the world’s most liberal countries in terms of alcohol consumption. The legal minimum age for consuming alcohol in public is 18, but there is no regulation of alcohol consumption in private. OR HERE https://archive.ph/LBcQ0 https://archive.ph/LBcQ0
- tgv 4y agoHow do these people, and I mean the higher-ups who instigate this, get to be so debased? I can't think of another word for it. It sounds like hazing to me, another one of those practices that seems to exist only for the benefit of sadists.
- cainxinth 4y agoThere might be a small hazing component, but I think they genuinely enjoy this stuff and incorrectly assume everyone else does too.
- mfashby 4y agoPower trip, I suppose. And lack of an negative feedback, or repercussions for actions.
- unsupp0rted 4y agoThey think it’s fun and can’t understand why a person wouldn’t want to have fun. Don’t you like fun?
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- acuozzo 4y ago> How do these people, and I mean the higher-ups who instigate this, get to be so debased? They have nothing else to do. Their lives are painfully empty. Their personalities are painfully empty. Their time is otherwise meaningless. The shit described here—all of it—suddenly feels indescribably unimportant when you have family, friends, side projects, hobbies, and a home to care for.
- GoToRO 4y agoBut... but... we are a family! At a previous job, when I joined, it felt like I joined the kindergarden.
- andsoitis 4y ago> culture in the company involved “humiliating and intrusive practices” including mock sexual acts, crude nicknames and obliging him to share his bed with another employee during work functions. That’s not fun. That’s a hostile work environment.
- tsol 4y agoYeah this headline from WP is pretty weird, especially given he won. Can you imagine a women winning a sexual harassment case at work and the news reporting "women wins right to not be fun at work"
- dehrmann 4y agoSounds like a mild frat hazing.
- danuker 4y agoLooks like the quotes were stripped on HN.
- snarfy 4y agoThe headline altering feature needs removed. It gets it wrong as often as it gets it right. I'd rather have the original headline, even if it's click bait. If the headline is going to be altered a human needs to be doing it.
- yawz 4y agoI was going to paste the same part. If true, it must have been a very strange and toxic working environment, possibly driven by a professional bro culture.
- PointyFluff 4y agoIs there an actual new source on this, beyond the Bezos Gazette?
- orwin 4y agoin French (Its legalese, so the translation will be weird): https://www.courdecassation.fr/decision/636b6e3e67b11ddcd1c424ca https://www.courdecassation.fr/decision/636b6e3e67b11ddcd1c4...
- themitigating 4y agoThe Washington Post could have used a better headline that more accurately defined the level of harassment. His coworkers weren't calling him stupid names.
- remram 4y agoIt's good that the decision came out the obvious right way, but it's really shameful that such a clear-cut case involving an individual asked to share a bed with another still tool 7 years to settle. This is really a sign that something is wrong in the court system. This was not a business dispute or a clash between companies, 7 years is a long time when an individual has their individual rights violated.
- Normille 4y agoI think the French judgement sounds reasonable. Especially given the sexual and humiliating overtones. But this one: >An auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers in England sued the company over severe injuries he sustained at a work event that “made a competitive virtue” of “excessive” drinking, in a lawsuit filed in London’s High Court this year. Michael Brockie fell down in the street, went into a coma and later had part of his skull removed after participating in the company event Dammit! --if only he'd thought to say 'No thanks. I've had enough' after the first few pints... or even 'No thanks. I don't drink'. But much better [and more profitable] to fail to take responsibility for your own actions, do something really stupid, fuck yourself up... and then cast around for someone to sue.
- Jiro 4y agoHow does that reasoning not apply to being forced to endure all sorts of unsafe working conditions? "No thanks, I don't drink" would earn demerits and maybe get him fired, just like "no thanks, I don't walk above vats without guardrails".
- Normille 4y agoThat's a nonsensical reply. For starters; No-one would be sacked for refusing to work in conditions which contravened H&S regs --and, if they were, they'd easily win a case for unfair dismissal. And, in the other situation; joining in with the company drinking games is not part of anyone's job description. So, likewise, anyone dismissed for that 'failing' would have a nailed on 'unfair dismissal' case. Besides. Have you never worked anywhere with muslim colleagues or teetotal ones? I have and quite often they'd come to the pub on a works piss-up for the social element. But stick to alcohol free drinks all night. I never saw anyone trying to force them into having a pint or threatening them with dismissal if they didn't. It's laughably ludicrous. No. The case I quoted is just another incidence of people failing to take responisibility for their own actions and seeking to excuse their own stupid and quite often horrific criminal behaviour by saying they were only going along with the crowd.
- Jiro 4y ago
- nobodyandproud 4y agoBy these standards my company’s events are tame. Vanilla, family-friendly events. I still absolutely hate attending them, yet it’s how you network and make yourself visible so it’s a must. Even keeping dry (no alcohol for me) I find loud events disorienting and I’m sure a few people thought I was drunk. Yet another way to feel like I don’t belong :/
- darthrupert 4y agoHe pities the fool.
- gjsman-1000 4y agoShould be retitled: “Man wins legal right to only work at work.” For goodness sake… The Office is not an instruction manual.
- layer8 4y ago> only work at work That’s ambiguous. He still might work at home. ;)
- roflyear 4y agoMy job is having a Christmas party on my day off and I'm expected to attend. I guess I should move that day...
- hyperhopper 4y agoWhat if (the company is okay with it) and people want to start taking shots during the day? Or inviting people to happy hours? Or work talk happens after happy hours because everybody on the team is friends and they happen to talk about work at 2am in the middle of a strip club together? No shit not everybody will be okay with that. But what if it's a company where that's the stated culture and they want to do that? Where is the line? Should nobody ever be allowed to have a company centered around "work hard play hard" where they enjoy having colleagues they can work with and also have a good relationship with after work?
- knome 4y agoWhat? No, employers obviously shouldn't be able to force employees to socialize off the clock. No company should have a "stated culture" of requiring employees to drink or go to "strip clubs together". It is a gross violation of the boundaries between the employer and employee. If you want friends to enjoy bacchanalian revelries with, find those friends. Don't pressure your employees into it. Moreso, are you going to force woman employees to attend these late night sessions? Will you expect muslim or mormon employees to drink? Or are you precommitting to not hiring any of them in the first place?
- 4y ago
- sillysaurusx 4y agoIn America laws like this are sidestepped by the manager coming up with a sufficiently solid reason to fire you. Suddenly nothing you do will be good enough, and good luck proving in court that it was. Huge hassle. (Narcoleptics like myself have a somewhat unique perspective on this topic. I imagine other people with disabilities might have similar stories. But narcolepsy is a tricky one because it’s not very visible, and the optimal strategy is to conceal it as long as possible. I remember wandering around the streets of Chicago during my lunch break looking for anywhere to catch a nap, collapsing on a bench, then getting yelled at by some random security guard to leave.)
- JadeNB 4y ago> In America laws like this are sidestepped by the manager coming up with a sufficiently solid reason to fire you. Suddenly nothing you do will be good enough, and good luck proving in court that it was. Huge hassle. It's worse than that—at least in "right-to-work" states (ha!), they don't even have to come up with a sufficiently solid reason; they just have to not mention the actual reason. There's this bizarre system of incentives where you can fire someone for no reason (which I think is a bad thing), but you can't fire someone for certain specific reasons (which I think is a good thing), so it is better from the manager's point of view for an unethical manager to pretend to fire a worker for no reason and hope that no-one accidentally documents something.
- simcop2387 4y agoSmall corrdction, that's 'at will' not 'right to work'. Right to work is about being able to force you to join a union to work at a place.
- Der_Einzige 4y agoAnd, I thought basically all states were at will, except sort of Montana?
- TylerE 4y ago
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- hn_throwaway_99 4y ago> The court – the highest in the French legal system – also outlined various "humiliating and intrusive" practices promoted by Cubik Partners including simulations of sexual acts and the obligation to share a bed with a colleague. I know legal documents are often one-sided, but seriously, WTF??
- xg15 4y agoI mean, the entire point of the case was that taking part in those activities was mandatory - so you can assume that consent was not given. I'm pretty sure that weird drinking games with sexual innuendo without consent wouldn't get any particularly favourable treatment in US courts either.
- CyberDildonics 4y ago.
- staindk 4y agoIt seems you've posted this in the wrong thread.
- CyberDildonics 4y agoI did and I can't delete it
- chrisseaton 4y agoForcing someone to share a bed with someone seems like sexual assault?
- netrus 4y agoIt's borderline accepted in some cases, usually when corporate travel is also benefiting the employee in some way - attending cool conferences (especially widespread in academia...), or for "fun" team-building trips. Luckily never happend to me, but not super uncommon. Usually you have the choice to say No, but at the price of being difficult (and potentially losing the next opportunity for a trip).
- readme 4y agoonly 3k probably the cost of the alcohol and hotel rooms he declined
- gjsman-1000 4y agoI wonder if he could sue them for workplace emotional and sexual abuse. I would argue that pressuring employees to do anything sexual is abuse. Imagine if your boss pressured you to marry his son. How is this that much different?
- CyberDildonics 4y agoImagine if your boss pressured you to marry his son. How is this that much different? Are you implying that that is common or accepted?
- omgwtfbyobbq 4y ago3k now, possibly more later. > The court ordered Cubik Partners to pay Mr T 3,000 euros and will examine Mr T's demand for damages at a later stage.
- leke 4y agoI pity the fool who doesn't pay him.
- black_puppydog 4y agoThe way I read this, there are still EUR 461,406 in salary since the nullified firing to be debated
- wildcow 4y agoHe is literally refered to as Mr. T. That is fun. He pitty them fouls!!!
- deltaseventhree 4y agoApart from the sexual acts I think culture is important. If you don't fit in culturally then you should yourself quit. Don't just stay there and be a stain on the team. Like someone shouldn't be obligated to stay after work to do "fun" stuff. But they shouldn't be constantly avoiding it and obviously not fit in at all with the company. It's a fuzzy line that's hard to define, so I think the law is correct here in terms of drawing a line rather then keeping something ambiguous and fuzzy. But if we go beyond the law and look at it from a practical standpoint, this guy likely didn't fit in and likely wasn't a good team member in terms of getting along with people. The laws say that work is just a job and if you do the work then you're good and that is the definition of the job, but it's often more then that. Your joining a team, a tribe a culture and sometimes many companies are looking for such a person. Maybe they should list having fun in the job description. That we expect someone to have fun with us, be part of the culture and come to our parties and stuff like that. That would be a fair deal. I've been on teams where this stuff is important and on those teams they definitely didn't want a person who just came to work for a paycheck and left asap. There are however tons of jobs where all they care about is your work and absolutely nothing else and I feel this guy should just look for that sort of job rather then trying to forcefully embed himself into a culture where he doesn't fit.
- skor 4y agoyou’re paid to do your job. Being part of your job falls in the _doing the job_. What’s not on the contract is obviously not part of it. Doing hard drugs, as is alcohol, is not part of any legal contract. My personal preference is to withdraw from any circumstances that include using hard drugs like alcohol with anyone you do serious work with. .. in fuzzy situations have a beer and make an excuse, it always works out better.
- deltaseventhree 4y agoIt's more then that for certain companies and teams. If that's what you want join the team where you _only do the job_. Don't join the team that demands more social bonding and friendship. This guy joined a team where he obviously didn't fit in. Case in point. In japan the outside of work stuff is a requirement for every job. You literally need to hang out with the entire team after work. This is the opposite extreme. What I'm advocating for is _join a team that fits_. Don't fucking insist that you're _doing the job_ on a team that obviously wants more.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- aliqot 4y agoCurious how this will impact their ability to be hired after becoming a spectacle in this manner, even rightfully.
- junon 4y agoThis. It's a big reason why stuff like this, wrongful termination suits, etc. have such little recourse. It's not worth it to most people to jeopardize their entire career.
- Silverback_VII 4y ago
- varenc 4y ago> Cubik Partners also said Mr T was difficult to work with and a poor listener. This is of course a great and somewhat obvious conclusion. Though the cynic in me thinks that Cubik Partners has simply learned they need to have other official reasons for firing people that fail to participate in the 'fun' in the future.
- connicpu 4y ago"difficult to work with and a poor listener" seems like it would have been the perfect standalone reason to fire someone, and they would have gotten away with it if they didn't cite refusing to participate in the after-work activities, but since they did cite the "fun" reason they got smacked down in court
- filleokus 4y agoSomeone with more experience of French labor law should chip in, but in Sweden as an example, it's literally almost impossible to fire people for such reasons. Most termination of employments here happens due to down scaling and then there is a first-in-first-out principle (which of course is skirted by categorising people differently so that different FIFO queues apply). But being bad for just being slightly bad at ones work, or difficult to work with or something is almost unheard of after the up to 6 month probation period (during which the employment is basically at will).
- connicpu 4y agoAh right employment law is much stricter in Europe. In that frame, citing not being fun seems even more insane
- hizxy 4y agoSurprising it was a French company.
- vegetablepotpie 4y ago> The court ruled that Mr T was exercising his "freedom of expression" by refusing to participate in the company's social activities, and that performing this "fundamental freedom" could not be a reason for his dismissal. It makes me upset that something basic like not wanting to drink lots of alcohol with your co-workers has to be justified with a legal framing of "freedom of expression". And Mr. T was fired in 2015, it took 7 years for this case to be concluded in the French court system. Not that French is an important qualifier, I fully expect the American legal system to take that long as well. It also makes me upset that the media's framing it as being not "fun". In actuality, most people don't have the funds, the time, and the gumption to go through with a legal battle. You of course need to find a new job, but in the meantime you have financial obligations, and those don't wait 7 years to be satisfied.
- frereubu 4y agoI agree with the sentiment, but it took so long because it went all the way to the Court of Cassation, the French equivalent of the Supreme Court.
- pmezard 4y agoIANAL, but closest French equivalent to Supreme Court is Conseil Constitutionnel. Cours de cassation is about breaking judgments because they were not made to the letter of the law. They do not pronounce general opinions about the law itself.
- omginternets 4y agoI think this is a case where the French parliamentary system doesn't map onto American institutions very well. IIRC, the Conseil Constitutionnel intervenes at the time of ratification of a law; it's a forward-looking body, unlike the US Supreme Court that judges law ex post facto (like the Cours de Cassation).
- roflc0ptic 4y agoRight. You can only imagine the amount of fury that would drive a person to follow through on a thing like this. I mean, kudos to him for his success here against professional depravity, but litigation is awful, and often it’s better to just let the bastards win.
- someweirdperson 4y agoThey list some of their activities on their web site [0, google translated], but alcohol and sharing beds is not mentioned. [0] https://www-cubik--partners-com.translate.goog/rejoignez-nous/?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp https://www-cubik--partners-com.translate.goog/rejoignez-nou...
- fasthands9 4y agoIf it involved drinking and sex as the lawsuit claimed then this is obviously good. Perhaps this may be frowned upon here - but I think a manager is absolutely justified in letting someone go if they refuse to be a good teammate or socialize. Perhaps it seems silly but I absolutely have worked harder at companies when everyone was friendly versus ones where the work was atomized and impersonal.