Woman fired for being irresistable

I don't think anyone is arguing that employees don't sometimes need to be fired, or laid off. I've fired people, if that helps.

I don't think anyone disagrees that there are even occasions where gross misbehaviour demands that they are dropped immediately, with no pay. However, in other circumstances, they shouldn't be dropped like a brick with no payoff (or an insufficient payoff, commensurate with the service they have given). This is especially true when the employer's own behaviour was at least 50% of the problem.

What stripping has to do with the subject, I have no idea.

 

What the hell.

I have Lindy mocking business academia for being out of touch with the real world and talking about my case study, which I brought up in response to cynthetiq 's mocking responses to business ethics, while he clearly does not understand the concept in any way or form and what it actually means, and Alistair defending HR departments (for God knows what reason, maybe his background is HRM) and not in the slightest accepting (or indicating an understanding of) the fact that HR departments sometimes deal team leaders a deck of really shitty cards to choose from.

No wonder Plan9 stays the fuck away from these discussions.

And no Lindy , that whole wall of text you wrote regarding real-world experience still has nothing to do with the conversation. I can easily write a very detailed crapload on the difficulties of running a small business, because compared to doing it in a notorious third-world country and dealing with the fascinating stupidity of some customers, balancing the sensitivities of local culture while working hard to get employees to understand the notion of "productivity", working in an insecure and highly unreliable environment while getting highly technical projects underway, keeping oneself out of prison because one refuses to be an enabler of the corruption in the government, and the day-to-day ruthlessness of many of one's competitors; your compelling notions of the realities of a first-world small business dealing with the nearby existence of a Walmart become a big pile of nothing.

Yes, the way you portray the owner's relationship with his/her employees would still be immensely disagreeable, even if you were an academic whiz and could use better terminology. Sometimes a business has to cut down out of necessity, and sometimes the manager chooses to fire in those situations whoever they think fits in the least instead of choosing the least productive, and that is both tolerable and acceptable. But to regard fellow human beings as mere commodities, without anything more to them than the use they have in making your business profit, and using that line of thought to defend "At Will" employment, where one can fire anyone for any reason at any time and without notice? Yes, still very disagreeable.

I'm done with this thread.

 

It looks like this thread has gotten away from discussion of the original issue and moved on to at-will employment.


What nobody seems to have mentioned is the effect of poor management practices (such as misusing at-will) on a business. Companies with only low-skill workers and "warm body" work can shuffle employees through, fire them for dubious reasons, etc and see little harm. However, companies that need professionals with skills worry about their reputations in employee communities.

If you treat your employees unfairly, only the desperate will want to work for you. You won't notice this immediately because there are lots of desperate (your desk will be piled high with resumes), but you will spend more time choosing employees, training employees, correcting employees' mistakes, etc than serving customers. Your competitiveness will suffer horribly from this.

Walmart gets away with it because they hire mostly warm-body employees. Its horrible for the employee who needs to feed their family because there are 6 billion people on the planet with a skillset of "potential walmart greeter." Companies that need working brains instead of lurching bodies are much better off paying 2 weeks of salary-in-lieu to employees who give reasonable notice than taking a larger, more nebulous hit later on.

Also, in many states, firing someone who has given notice before their notice period is up is dismissal without cause and makes the employee eligible for unemployment benefits.

As for the original subject, the guy has no choice. If his wife doesn't like him, divorce court will take all he has, indebt him for the rest of his life and keep him away from his children. A successful regular lawsuit will only take some multiple of the employee's salary. Even if he thinks it is very wrong, he is going to fire her.

 

Well fucking doodledoo, this is what happens when someone doesn't bother to read a post properly. In case you didn't notice (obviously you haven't), all my points regarding HR were aimed at Alistair. Never were directed towards you, and still aren't. Read my comments again, they actually support your stance.

I haven't commented on any of your statements, other than the third-rate mocking you managed to write about business ethics.

It baffles me that you keep talking about business ethics. You don't understand what it consists of, yet you keep mistaking it as some sort of morality doctrine. It isn't, and if there is anything arrogant here, it's your continued out-of-your-ass stance on this topic.

 

Just for the record, if I was defending HR it was probably down to my poor communication. That wasn't what I thought I was doing. While I have met some very good HR people, my general stance is one of caution when I have to deal with them and I tend towards very close supervision of everything I ask of them.

 

Sort of related, sort of not..... being irresistable is one thing, being detestable is another.
"Your Coworkers Complained About Your Flatulence": Federal Employee Formally Recognized for His Farting Skills
Why an employee thinks they can get away with this, is beyond me. Obviously, they sometimes do. Why should an employer keep them? Is it because he is a union member? Or is it because its a government job?

 

In that case I will have to apologize. I took your stance of very close supervision as sarcasm, since most people emphasize the "need" for departmental autonomy in order for a business/corporation to run efficiently.

 

Government job. Once employed by the government, due process kicks in and its much harder to fire gov't employees.

 

Yes, I'm sure the example given in that comment on a Gawker article was a completely true story with no embellishment.

How terrible, people are afforded due process rather than being fired indiscriminately.

 

Flippant and sarcastic comments rarely contribute to informed debate.

On that point, due process for government employees involves things like, teachers leaving 8 year old children unattended, teachers hitting their students, cops who take bribes, etc. They have an entire firing process that takes a couple of months, even if the evidence is strong, and even if there is a pending criminal case. In the meantime, the government employees are still receiving pay. It creates a lot of administrative costs, along with costs to the tax-payers who have to fund the employee's salary and the administrators of these boards and commissions.

 

If being physically attractive is something that makes a woman at repeated risk of being fired, does that mean that being pretty is a disability?
All he and his wife had to do, was kit all the staff out in ugly uniforms surely. His head, his problem. Could have taken a sabbatical for treatment and hired a locum.