A company that won’t forgive
This happened:
Boohoohoo, all she did was try to bully a novelist for having Non-approved views.
Mind you, I don’t really think she should have been fired for that, at least when I think about it. The novelist in question doesn’t think so either.
But still. There is a certain schadenfreude in seeing it happen.
The novelist is Christina Dalcher.
Ah well. Forget it Christina: it’s Chinatown.
I don’t think she should have been sacked, but then again I do think her employer should have taken her aside and said ‘Your job is to sell books, not pick public fights with authors you don’t approve of. Please think about that and how it reflects on your ability to work for us as booksellers.’ Also, people like this suddenly become very lacking in agency at times like this – I’ve been sacked because of the actions of this other person – she’s really hateful – she holds horrible views. Never a mention of the things she herself did. No, all just suddenly happened to her out of the blue while she sat there passively selling books and smelling of violets.
I think her employer should have taken her aside and yelled at her. At LEAST.
Tilly is expecting more foregiveness and understanding than she’s willing to give. It’s a bit different when the razor of retribution is in a hand that is not your own. The blade will happily cut whoever it is waved at. Trans advocates seem blithely unaware of this, or at least unreasonably confident in their permanent control of who gets the razing. They can’t seem to imagine that they would be subject to the same treatment they advocated for their opponents. After all, they deserve it. What goes around, sowing/reaping, karma’s a bitch, and all of that.
I wonder if she was okay with Waterstones’ store staff making TERFy books difficult to find? I wonder how high up in the organization this “policy” of hiding GC books went, or if it was just the initiative of an eager cadre of crusading, blue-haired, they/them sales clerks, blessed with an overabundance of facial piercings and a dearth of scruples?
Ah, but in NZ an employer can get in trouble for yelling at an employee, so better to give them a long, serious ‘counselling’ session as to future expectations.
All this does leave me wondering what else she’s said or done, on social media or otherwise… I mean, it does indeed seem strange for a company these days to fire someone over “a single mistake” in the direction she made hers (not so much the other way around, mind you), but her comments in that video strike me as narcissistic and petty enough for me to suspect she persistently irritated/insulted either the wrong person, or enough other employees that the company felt they had evidence of grounds for dismissal if she did appeal. “Appealing” to me wouldn’t be about getting reinstated, but compensation, which makes me think she’s being disingenuous with us here about making “a single mistake” or their stated reason for firing her or both. I don’t know exactly how labour laws work where she is, though.
I think a key issue is that the original Tweet came across sounding like she was ‘ripping up’ and ‘pitching in the bin’ not her own personal books, but those on the store’s shelves. The latter is so far out of bounds for an employee that the company pretty much had no choice. If she was simply talking about her own collection, then she did a lousy job of communicating that, and it suggests that maybe she’s not the best person for a public-facing job.
Normally, I’d say that employees have every right to their opinions and companies shouldn’t be able to fire people over them.
This is better for everyone involved, because it means the company isn’t answerable for their employees’ views, and reduces the power of the cancel culture mobs on the left and right.
That said, you can’t destroy your boss’ stock. Threatening to do so…
I wouldn’t have gone as far as firing her myself, but it would be a disciplinary action.
The employment laws in the UK are fairly strict. You can’t be fired out of hand if you are out of your probation period. There is a procedure of written warnings and if she has been unfairly dismissed she can take Waterstones to an employment tribunal.
There might be a pattern of bad behaviour here.
I’m trying to think what would happen if I, an identifiable employee of Acme Limited, said in public that one of Acme’s suppliers of components were pants and I was going to destroy their components (I don’t know if that is an exact analogy).
I would expect a severe reprimand at least.
KBPlayer:
That is not strictly true. Employers may instantly dismiss an employee for gross misconduct which can include acts such as theft, deliberate damage of company property, threats against the company, its owners, managers or staff and/or its property and bringing the company’s name into disrepute.
The tweet in question could possibly be interpreted as a threat to damage company property as well as bringing the company into disrepute.