No BJ's At Work

Student fired for using slang

HR Guy fired a student worker for sending this email:

To: listserv
From: Matt
Subject: Shift available Thurs 3/31, 5pm - 9pm...
Reason: I have a big lab I have to do. Copious BJ’s to the person who takes this shift.

His boss, Herr Direktor, looked at the email, uttered the words, "Take care of it." and left.

Read the full story here and here.

Comments

[Anthony Meaney]

I don't think he was fired for using slang.

[Recruiting Animal]

Anthony, do you think he was offering the real thing? If not, it was a figure of speech. Inotherwords, slang.

And, you might not like this kind of talk but it's hardly firing level sexual harrassment. And if university policy was deranged, did Director Burkhalter have to fire the guy or was he able to make a personal call? I suspect the latter. So, he was fired for using unacceptable slang. Not for real harrassment.

[Chris Taylor]

HR guy got e-mails from staff complaining about the message, including a threat to take it to the Human Rights Commission. I offer no opinion on its chances before the commission, but I would be surprised if the sender did not receive some kind of pummelling from management.

Also their termination process is hilariously outdated -- having the IT guy in the meeting, and planning to revoke access later, from home. Duh.

In many companies the HR folks will call or e-mail the IT department and tell them it is absolutely code-red priority that so-and-so's network access, e-mail, VPN, blackberry, telecom, building passes (and so on) gets pulled at exactly 11:15am (or any other designated time) -- not before, and not afterward.

Meanwhile at the designated time, Joe or Jane Employee is meeting with their line manager and HR behind closed doors. All his/her network / phone / email / wireless access gets terminated while they are in the meeting. Manager and HR get the now-disabled building pass in the meeting, and they and site security walk Joe/Jane Former Employee out. Then the line manager writes the "so-and-so has left the company to pursue other opportunities" e-mail to the staff.

No muss, no fuss, no e-mail tantrums.

[Recruiting Animal]

Recipients were right to complain if they found it distasteful. That doesn't necessarily make it a fire.

[Chris Taylor]

Depends on the company's communications policy, RA. Most of the time you sign an agreement when you get company gear (desktop/laptop, network logins, wireless devices). The agreement states what hardware you're getting and what you're not supposed to do with it.

One of ours, for instance, forbids the viewing or disseminating of sexually explicit or offensive material, including, specifically, tasteless jokes or anything inconsistent with the firm's values and policies. That is a pretty broad dragnet, I'll grant, but if HR guy's company had somthing similar, and Joe Clueless signed it, there's no reason he shouldn't be terminated with cause.

[Your HR Guy]

Working for the university was 10 times more politically correct than any private company I ever worked for. To be fair to the Director, he was in a better position to defend an over-defined version of sexual harassment than a more laxed version. The university had just gone through several lawsuits regarding sexual harassment and probably got the word from the top to put a lid on it.

The Director didn't know about the e-mails in reply either, only I did. I understood the concern on his part but I thought it was a bit of an over-enforcement. The sad part about it is that employers are really encouraged by both the law and the rulings on the matter to over-enforce sexual harassment law rather than correctly enforce it. This student was a bit on the dumb side so it was more frustrating than anything that he would expose himself to any action in this way.

And there is no doubt in my mind that the U hasn't gotten better at firing people. I tried my best in that environment but I certainly wouldn't choose to work there ever again.

[Recruiting Animal]

Anthony J Meaney certainly recalls the case, also at a unversity, in which one student called another a behema (cow/beast) and got hauled up on charges of racism. It seemed absurd.

[Colin Kingsbury]

Sorry, but I'm keeping my powder dry to defend people who don't act like arrogant buffoons. As far as I'm concerned, the school did its job by teaching the kid a lesson before a mistake like this could really screw up his life.

[Tiffany]

It seems to me that one of the more subtle skills one must learn to be successful in the workforce is to know when your off-color slang will be appreciated and when it's better to play it safe. I work in an office of just a few people, and age-wise we're all within a few years of each other, so the joke that plays well in that environment might not do so well with the nice old lady in accounts payable or whatever. If, as so many of us are taught, the person feeling harrassed determines what is and is not sexual harrassment, then it's pretty key to know who you're sending those emails to, no?

[Your HR Guy]

I think it illustrates an important lesson for employees: know your audience and know them well. A listserv of 150 people is too big.

[Canadian Headhunter]

Tiffy, what constitutes firing-level sexual harrassment cannot be entirely the decision of the victim.

First, not all victims agree with eachother and, second, we'd be handing our lives over to the most extreme and possibly deranged people.

I notice in today's Toronto Star that Jess Dobkin, an American artist working in Toronto, is pursuing the recontextualization of certain taboos. Perhaps we should do the same with slang.

Toronto Star.
http://www.thestar.com/NASApp/cs/ContentServer?pagename=thestar/Layout/Article_Type1&c=Article&cid=1150408210765&call_pageid=968332188492&col=968793972154&t=TS_Home

[Canadian Headhunter]

Tiffy, what constitutes firing-level sexual harrassment cannot be entirely the decision of the victim.

First, not all victims agree with eachother and, second, we'd be handing our lives over to the most extreme and possibly deranged people.

I notice in today's Toronto Star that Jess Dobkin, an American artist working in Toronto, is pursuing the recontextualization of certain taboos. Perhaps we should do the same with slang and harrassment.

What this guy did was silly, not "criminal". Worthy of disciplinary action but not firing.

[Tiffany]

What constitutes "firing-worthy" is generally a function of how willing the company is to defend a lawsuit based on the behavior, because *legally speaking,* sexual harrassment is indeed defined almost always by the perceptions of the victim, at least in US courts. The definition rests on the phrase "hostile work environment," which can only be judged by the person who feels like the object of the hostility. So it doesn't really matter if the victim is crazy or uptight except in the most ridiculous of cases- it comes down to how likely the "victim" is to pursue action against the "harrasser" and the company that employs them, and how valuable the accused is to that organization.

Which means that if you're the university president, you might get to keep your job, but if you're a student flunkie who said something dumb on a listserv, you're toast.

[Canadian Headhunter]

Tiffy, thanks for your ongoing replies. However, any sane person can see that this is a case of puritanism not harrassment.

1. This guy didn't threaten anyone personally.

2. Nor did he plaster the walls of a public cublicle with pictures from Gent or Hustler to create a lewd, thoroughly sexual environment.

3. He used some vulgar language as a joke.

I enjoy vulgar language as a kind of salt and pepper in regular conversation. Even though, I also believe that when it's over-used I think it debases the general environment.

For instance, I've worked in places where the only adjective people seem to know is "fucken".

Still, I wouldn't fire anyone for it. And this guy didn't even do that.

I'm sure that Colin and Anthony would not agree with Andrea Dworkin that all heterosexual sex is rape but think that such a statement is ridiculous overkill.

But for some reason, they believe that a case of playful bad manners is an offence worthy of a harsh punishment.

[Tiffany]

Oh, I'm not saying the kid DESERVED it- there's a lot that's ridiculous and overwrought about sexual harrassment policy in the US- but the fact is, the caselaw on it heavily favors the accuser, no matter how minor the transgression, and many companies aren't willing to spend the time or money to save the job of some kid on a work-study program. My point is just that it's better that the kid learns it NOW, at a college job that won't significantly affect his resume, than later when it could seriously damage his career.

It sucks, but it's an important lesson about how the workplace isn't always FAIR and coworkers aren't always REASONABLE.