4 ms·

Regardless of whether it is 'appropriate workplace behavior' to call a jerk a jerk, firing someone for it is so far outside the range of 'appropriate behavior'

by Aeolun 6mo ago

Regardless of whether it is 'appropriate workplace behavior' to call a jerk a jerk, firing someone for it is so far outside the range of 'appropriate behavior' that it's hard to make a comparison.

YZF 6mo ago
Let's bring this close to home. You hire someone to mow your lawn. They come in every week and mow your lawn. And you pay them. One day you walk by and they're talking with your neighbor and you overhear them saying you're a rich a-hole and a jerk, and an idiot. I mean not appropriate workplace behavior. Are they going to still have a job or would you prefer that someone else mows your lawn? I mean they just said nasty things about you- nbd. not something that should affect their status as your "employee".
- bmicraft 6mo ago
  Several things severely wrong with this example. The employee didn't talk to an outsider, they didn't talk to someone the CEO would be likely to have known personally, and they're so far removed from the CEO nobody thinks they'd know them on a personal level. You just can't talk about a CEO as if they're a person interacting and hiring people individually because they just don't.
  - YZF 6mo ago
    In a small company a CEO may approve all hiring. In a larger company they delegate that. But they run the company. Everyone in the company including those hiring reports directly or indirectly to them. When an employee communicates broadly inside a company, even if it's not directly to outsiders, that is essentially public. As we can see in this thread some random person chimed in with the details. But s/neighbor/your wife/ if that helps the analogy and insider vs. outsider is the issue. It's an imperfect one as they all tend to be. This is why for example quarterly results are not generally communicated to all insiders in a company before they are released, because they are going to leak. I think my analogy, though imperfect, demonstrates that when you have some sort of employment or other relationship, "bad mouthing" the other party, either in public or in private, is expected to be damaging to this relationship. The CEO of your company is the closest thing to the single person employing you. He runs the entity that employs you.
- Aeolun 6mo ago
  If a person I interacted with on a personal level did they, yeah, I’d be upset. If one of my 2000 employees wrote something in Slack? No, I don’t think it would even register.
handoflixue 6mo ago
What a wild cultural difference. Where do you live? Over here in the USA, I don't think any customer service worker expects to be able to openly mock a customer and still have a job. I struggle to imagine the idea of calling my boss a wanker to his face and still expecting to have a job. To insult the CEO seems like it might as well be a resignation - if you have that little respect for leadership, why are you working at that company?
- bmicraft 6mo ago
  > if you have that little respect for leadership, why are you working at that company? What an astoundingly dumb question. Most people work somewhere to get paid, and If you think its unusual to hate the boss, oh boy, do I have news for you!
  - stvltvs 6mo ago
    I got mouths to feed, and if I only worked at places where I respected everyone in top leadership, well ... we'd probably starve.
  - handoflixue 6mo ago
    There's a huge difference between "I hate my boss" and "I'm willing to publicly humiliate him to his face". Are you really struggling to understand that distinction?
- piva00 6mo ago
  Over there in the USA there's a culture of extreme deference to corporate leadership, probably stemming from the slavery and servitude past. It's very similar in Brazil as well, sharing from the same past. It's funny that such a cognitive dissonance between freedoms and rights vs the absolutist tyranny of corporate life making a mockery of those freedoms can coexist in the same society with the same staying power.
  - seanmcdirmid 6mo ago
    You aren’t wrong, but having worked in China as well as the states (and a short stint in Switzerland), I think east Asia (china, Japan, Korea) has that even worse, probably due to Confucius. As China is looking more and more like the future, I fear that this gets worse before it gets better.

by Aeolun 6mo ago

Regardless of whether it is 'appropriate workplace behavior' to call a jerk a jerk, firing someone for it is so far outside the range of 'appropriate behavior' that it's hard to make a comparison.

YZF 6mo ago

Let's bring this close to home. You hire someone to mow your lawn. They come in every week and mow your lawn. And you pay them. One day you walk by and they're talking with your neighbor and you overhear them saying you're a rich a-hole and a jerk, and an idiot. I mean not appropriate workplace behavior. Are they going to still have a job or would you prefer that someone else mows your lawn? I mean they just said nasty things about you- nbd. not something that should affect their status as your "employee".

bmicraft 6mo ago
Several things severely wrong with this example. The employee didn't talk to an outsider, they didn't talk to someone the CEO would be likely to have known personally, and they're so far removed from the CEO nobody thinks they'd know them on a personal level. You just can't talk about a CEO as if they're a person interacting and hiring people individually because they just don't.
- YZF 6mo ago
  In a small company a CEO may approve all hiring. In a larger company they delegate that. But they run the company. Everyone in the company including those hiring reports directly or indirectly to them. When an employee communicates broadly inside a company, even if it's not directly to outsiders, that is essentially public. As we can see in this thread some random person chimed in with the details. But s/neighbor/your wife/ if that helps the analogy and insider vs. outsider is the issue. It's an imperfect one as they all tend to be. This is why for example quarterly results are not generally communicated to all insiders in a company before they are released, because they are going to leak. I think my analogy, though imperfect, demonstrates that when you have some sort of employment or other relationship, "bad mouthing" the other party, either in public or in private, is expected to be damaging to this relationship. The CEO of your company is the closest thing to the single person employing you. He runs the entity that employs you.
Aeolun 6mo ago
If a person I interacted with on a personal level did they, yeah, I’d be upset. If one of my 2000 employees wrote something in Slack? No, I don’t think it would even register.

handoflixue 6mo ago

What a wild cultural difference. Where do you live? Over here in the USA, I don't think any customer service worker expects to be able to openly mock a customer and still have a job. I struggle to imagine the idea of calling my boss a wanker to his face and still expecting to have a job. To insult the CEO seems like it might as well be a resignation - if you have that little respect for leadership, why are you working at that company?

bmicraft 6mo ago
> if you have that little respect for leadership, why are you working at that company? What an astoundingly dumb question. Most people work somewhere to get paid, and If you think its unusual to hate the boss, oh boy, do I have news for you!
- stvltvs 6mo ago
  I got mouths to feed, and if I only worked at places where I respected everyone in top leadership, well ... we'd probably starve.
- handoflixue 6mo ago
  There's a huge difference between "I hate my boss" and "I'm willing to publicly humiliate him to his face". Are you really struggling to understand that distinction?
piva00 6mo ago
Over there in the USA there's a culture of extreme deference to corporate leadership, probably stemming from the slavery and servitude past. It's very similar in Brazil as well, sharing from the same past. It's funny that such a cognitive dissonance between freedoms and rights vs the absolutist tyranny of corporate life making a mockery of those freedoms can coexist in the same society with the same staying power.
- seanmcdirmid 6mo ago
  You aren’t wrong, but having worked in China as well as the states (and a short stint in Switzerland), I think east Asia (china, Japan, Korea) has that even worse, probably due to Confucius. As China is looking more and more like the future, I fear that this gets worse before it gets better.