Judge Rules Boss's "Firing Contest" Created a Hostile Work Environment 314
Branded the "boss from hell" by his employees, 57-year-old William Ernst lost a court battle with ex-workers over unemployment benefits. An Iowa judge has decided that Ernst's "firing contest" memo wasn't the best management strategy, saying, "The employer’s actions have clearly created a hostile work environment by suggesting its employees turn on each other for a minimal monetary prize. This was an intolerable and detrimental work environment.” The memo reads in part: "New Contest – Guess The Next Cashier Who Will Be Fired!!! To win our game, write on a piece of paper the name of the next cashier you believe will be fired. Write their name [the person who will be fired], today's date, today's time, and your name. Seal it in an envelope and give it to the manager to put in my envelope."
The problem with the "I'm an asshole" boss (Score:5, Insightful)
I had a boss like that once. He thought his "openly asshole" style of management was helpful because it "encouraged competition." In reality, the only thing it encouraged was hatred. It brought us closer as a team, but only in hating him. Half the employees were stealing from him, the other half were actively plotting against him. Basically, he created an environment where retaining talent was impossible, and only the dregs who couldn't get hired anywhere else stayed behind. He thought he was being clever, but he was only costing the company all its promising talent (including me).
It's one thing to be a no-nonsense boss with high standards, it's quite another to be an obnoxious asshole who drives away all your best employees.
Re:I'd do it (Score:2, Insightful)
Well, to be fair, they really don't. At will employment is at will employment, and there are pluses and minuses for both employers and employees. And note that this actual practice was not found illegal in any way. All the case determined was that if a person quit rather than be subjected to this, they were eligible for unemployment benefits. And to be honest, it's pretty unlikely this ruling would be upheld on appeal. As an employer of an at will employee, you can pretty much do whatever the fuck you want as long as you don't discriminate on the basis of age, race, sex, religion, creed etc.
And this is one area where the free market will actually work itself out pretty nicely. If you treat all your employees like you treat your worst employee, pretty soon only your worst employees will continue working for you.
Re:Sad. (Score:4, Insightful)
You really need to read up on some history to understand why there are labor laws.
Re:Sad. (Score:5, Insightful)
That would be why there are so many nations in the world which managed to lift themselves up to first world status by eschewing the ideas of labor laws, right?
History is replete with examples of libertarian paradises where the job-creators built wealth unfettered by regulation and the fruits of their labor enriched everyone! Why, there's Somalia, and Libya, and...
Re:Text of the memo (Score:2, Insightful)
Wow. What an asshole.
He was only threatening to fire people actively intentionally breaking some fairly simple rules. I LOLed when I read it. All I have to do, is not talk on my phone when I'm supposedly working, not violate the dress code, not violate security rules. I would not exactly break out in a cold sweat of terror.
Now a Real toxic A hole, much worse than this guy, would threaten randomly, based on totally random arbitrary "attitude" or if female how hot she was.
Being the hacker mentality the first thing I though of was how to crack his system, entering multiple times, framing others by writing their name, etc.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Sad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Be careful calling libertarians' bluff. Until relatively recently, none other than Alan Greenspan (an Ayn Rand acolyte) maintained that government should have little or no role in policing fraud [moneyshow.com]:
So, yes, some of them are that crazy. Yes, Greenspan has since recanted, but as they say, a sucker is born every minute... Rand's books still sell like hotcakes to naive college freshmen.
Re:The problem with the "I'm an asshole" boss (Score:3, Insightful)
This is why labor laws exist... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm all for workers' rights, and also can see things from the employers' side, but man, when you see a piece of work like that guy, you realize that there's a reason for all these labor laws and regulations. Just like everything in life, one chunk of idiots messes up things for everyone else. That happens on both sides of the equation - from the labor side, think about the people you work with who actively avoid doing anything, even going out of the way to be difficult. Or think about tenant-landlord laws -- they are slanted in favor of tenants because a fraction of landlords abuse their influence, regardless of how nightmarish a tenant might be. If people were rational on both sides, there would be less need for regulation.
My experience with small-to-medium size business owners and managers has been mixed. For every decent, hardworking guy working his guts out to make a good place to work, there's the Napoleonic, reactive, stressed out crazy guy who creates a hostile work environment. It's not limited to small businesses either, but you see more of these types in small businesses because they're typically more invested. Some of it can probably be traced to the personality type you need to have to be a business owner -- combative, competitive, driven, etc. There's no way to succeed in small business without having at least some of those traits.
In this case, it sounds mainly like ignorance of the law or willful disregard of it. The guy probably thought he was being funny, making a joke of what he saw as a major affront to his view of the world. I'm guessing the thought process goes something like this:
- I am Master of Convenience Stores, King of the World.
- I've got a bunch of kids who aren't doing everything I tell them.
- I can fire anyone I want, and I will keep firing until I have a set of perfectly obedient employees.
- Since the economy is lousy, I can scare my employees into doing what I want.
- Hey, I know, let's make this fun! Heh heh heh, that'll show those idiots.... ...and the contest is born.
In my opinion, people who subscribe to the "I can fire anyone for any reason and treat them like slaves because they should be paying ME to work here" attitude are left with the people who can't get jobs with normal bosses. Most people don't want to work for an unpredictable tyrant. Demanding good work is one thing, but being unreasonable is another. He just probably figured that his employees are either kids or people who really can't get better work and thought "motivation" like this was appropriate.
Same thing goes for things like sexual harassment. I'm sure no one *wants* to be treated like that, but business owners abuse their power because they can.
Re:Sad. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yup. And the result of only a small proportion benefiting was laborers rioting with shotguns because they can't feed their families, children working in deadly mills because it's the only way to get fed, poisonous products and manufacturing processes, higher education out of the reach of 90% of the people, and unregulated unsafe healthcare for the vast majority. Those abuses resulted in the current regulatory environment and only liars, fools, and republicans say that removing those regulations wouldn't return us to those dark times.
Just because the 'invisible hand' wields a knife and a gun does NOT mean that it's attached to Indiana Jones! All of our regulations are the result of the market adjusting; that's what it means to be a democratic republic with a capitalistic economy. Workers vote. It's only the current batch or republicanized libertarians that want to unbalance the system towards corporations by denying workers any benefit of in fact comprising most of the market itself.
The labor market is NOT infinite, there are NOT always opportunities to leave abusive employers, and in many cases, survival depends on having a job (even now; if you don't have insurance to cover health problems, you AND your family stands one illness away from losing everything). Not all items are luxuries, and just because we represent values in terms of dollars does NOT make everything fungible; not all actions are reversible in this world.
Be honest now: What each righty wants is to return to some of the darkest, most evil periods in our history, in the vain hope that they would be one of the few at the top who benefit.
Tell the Truth (Score:5, Insightful)
This statement is intellectually dishonest. The GILDED age (not Guilded) occurred around the turn of the Century. The regulation that this poster talks about arose after the GREAT DEPRESSION.
The Great Depression followed the excesses of the Gilded Age.
Republican trickle-down economics doesn't trickle down water.
Re:Sad. (Score:5, Insightful)
ROFL on the exaggerated part. You MUST be a 'republitarian'; you just deny history in order to make your goals seem more laudable; you excise whole market segments that don't 'behave' the way you want a free market behave, and the economy you admire is one that never existed! Your dogma says that you can always get another job, even though reality disagrees... You think that I was trying to make US workers seem more 'desired'? Hahahaha! And folk with dogma like yours would take everything away from us, even hope for our children (unless you could afford a good school) because THAT would make US workers more 'desired'. I suppose it's true though. No corporation WANTS to pay any more expenses than they have to, and if you get your way, since the jobs don't exist, supply and demand would 'adjust' wages to third-world levels. And that would be a GOOD thing that would return us to days of gilded glory, right? RIGHT?