Dear Employer Of That Chick-Fil-A Jerk: Please Do Not Fire Him
August 4, 2012 13 Comments
Reportedly, the guy who made the laziest and jerkiest Chick-Fil-A protest imaginable, as I mentioned here, has been fired from his job, as CFO at some catheter vendor. If true, that is regrettable and unwelcome and I hope his employer would reconsider.
Why would he be fired for making such a video on his own time? Really, I see only two possibilities (or some combo of the two):
- A bunch of right-wingers researched/found out this guy’s employer and made angry phone calls and emails to the firm. They had no stomach for the bad publicity, got spooked by it, so axed him.
- The CEO or boss of his firm personally finds the guy’s political beliefs, as expressed in that video, repellent.
If #1 this was just bad behavior on the part of those right-wingers. Keep the ridicule on the net where it belongs.
If #2 the CEO or boss is being a jerk, firing someone for disagreeing with him politically.
Or, it could be some combination of the two bad effects.
Yes, I understand that anyone who works for such a corporation in such a capacity has, in some clause of his employment contract or another, some language saying he will strive to portray the corporation in a good light and exemplify the corporation’s virtues and values as a corporate citizen (or some such bullcrap), and can be fired if he doesn’t.
I don’t think such provisions are good developments nor that they should be encouraged or applauded. Dumb-ass videos aside, there’s no reason to believe he didn’t or couldn’t perform his job duties adequately. This guy is clearly a repulsive jerk on his own time but it’s also pretty crappy that he lost his job over something so dumb. I am far more distressed by an employer that would do that than the mere fact that the employer had a jerk on its payroll. There are jerks on everyones’ payrolls.
That’s your subtle way of trying to ensure that if your blogging activities are discovered you won’t be fired, right?
Ha!
Hmm. You think it’ll work?
The guy is a complete a-hole. Such an a-hole that he’s a PR danger. When your at the C-level you have to be worried about this kind of stuff.
Also, anyone with judgement this bad may excersize bad judgement at their work. I would certainly never higher this guy after seeing this video, so why not fire him?
Yeah, but pretty much the only reason he was a PR danger in this case is because a lot of overzealous right wingers (I gather) investigated who this guy was and who his employer was, and then sent angry emails and voicemails to the company. That wasn’t nice behavior and it didn’t have to happen. I assume it’s the only reason the company even knew about this video in the first place. I think it’s fair to say this was a jerky thing to do for those who did it.
Whether this video betrayed bad judgment on his part is obviously a judgment call that his employer would have been free to make (even without all the calls/emails), but it’s certainly imaginable that while he’s a loony no-life ‘activist’ in his personal life he’s perfectly competent at CFO’ing some medical device vendor in Arizona. I’m not sure we’d all want employers to be scouring what we do on our own time for indications of ‘bad judgment’ – there’s always gonna be *something*.
It may be I suppose that he was already screwing up at work and the boss was just looking for a good reason to can him. In a way that’s the ‘best case’ scenario here because, the least harm was done. But that’s pure speculation, we have no reason to believe it. In any event, much as it pains me to admit, I now feel sorry for the jerk.
Sonic,
Sometimes your dense. The guy decided to harass a poor old lady working for minimum wage just to get his rocks off. That’s cruel and stupid. The fact that he comes of as the most pathetic of loser pricks is just icing on the cake.
There is a surplus of labor out there. Lots of people can do his CFO job just fine. Being a C-level executive is often about dealing with people, not even doing a ton of actual work. The guy seems like such a tool. I can’t imagine wanting to be in meetings with him.
Thanks for trying but I still feel sorry for the jerk (unfortunately).
You’re right that he’s a tool and I can’t imagine wanting to be in meetings with him. Unfortunately, the same is true of a good 40% (give or take 20%) of the population, including those in the labor surplus. It’s far from obvious that any great improvement is done by canning this jerk and going out and hiring some other Arizona-area MBA – probably also a tool – to come be the CFO of this company. Make no mistake I’m not saying the company doesn’t have the right to fire him or something, I’m just saying I wish they wouldn’t have. More particularly, I wish the internet right-wingers hadn’t reacted to the stupid video by making harrassing phone calls etc. to that company. That wasn’t exactly cool or admirable behavior, was it?
He was a selfish asshole harassing some poor women. That seems ground for protest to me. Think of what your reaction would be stripped of his flimsy political premise. If he had just made a video of him verbally abusing an old woman who was trapped for kicks and bragged about it on the internet you wouldn’t want him around.
Ok I really can’t believe I’m saying this but I think you’re actually going overboard in characterizing what he did as ‘verbally abusing’. I mean please, it wasn’t *that* bad. I’ve seen far, far, far worse behavior/arguments in public among strangers a zillion times.
Argh. Now I feel sorry for him *and* I’m defending the original behavior. I need a shower now, thanks a lot.
It doesn’t sound like the company was that pressured. He made a video of someone without their permission, harrased the person, and posted to his youtube account. My understanding is that he mentions that he is CFO, etc on his you-tube account properties. At the CFO level, the company would be stupid not to dump him as a liability. The entire video is such an eggregious violation of professionalism, and adulthood, it would stick to the company if they did not get rid of him. It’s one thing to have free speech, it’s another to post your stupidity to youtube. Caveat Emptor.
I disagree that the company didn’t feel pressure…in his ‘apology’ video he mentions that when he got back to the office they’d had tons of voice mails that had exhausted their system’s capacity. I doubt that they ‘felt pressure’ in the sense that those peoples’ complaints were really taken seriously – just that they didn’t want all the bother.
Clearly I’m not a fan of this guy or his behavior and I agree with caveat emptor and all that. But far as I can tell it does seem to be the case that if a bunch of people hadn’t taken it upon themselves to jerkily call this guy’s employer, that employer would have never known about the video, and he’d still have the job. The fact that this guy is a jerk doesn’t mean it wasn’t a jerky thing to do to call his employer and leave some voice mail, which is all I’m saying. Believe me I dislike being in the position of feeling sorry for this jerk
I too feel sorry for that jerk :/
Sonic, can’t you put in a word for him at your firm?
Hasn’t he been through enough? Let’s not dig him in any deeper of a hole than he’s already in.
If you don’t do something, he might end up having to work at Chick-Fil-A, serving chicken fillet, giving out water and being harassed by people both pro and anti gay marriage.