As I wrote upthread, I just can’t see that this is a company event. It’s a group of friends getting together to mourn someone they love. That they work together is incidental.
It may not be a company event, but when you are around coworkers, you have to behave differently than if you are around people you choose to socialize with because of common interests, beliefs, or temperaments. You are around these people because you work with them, and you will go to work with them tomorrow, and when your supervisor is there, you’d better not get so drunk that she has to think about that time she held your hair up while you puked in the bushes when she is evaluating your performance review.
I tend to want to give a bye to someone mourning for a beloved friend. Admittedly my perspective may be skewed. I rarely drink or hang around persons who do so to the point of intoxication. About the only time I do the latter is when my brother and our cousins get together for a post-funeral bottle of Scotch.
When I worked in a car dealership, the new cars sales people often got together for drinks on Saturday nights, and I was usually the sole hold-out: rarely attending, and never getting drunk. And I once took someone home in a similar situation as in the OP, though for entirely different reasons.
Also, To dangerosa’s point, I don’t think Katina has much of a moral high ground to criticize here. Bear in mind that the sales staff, who all work for her, get together to drink on a regular basis, and she’s done nothing about it; and clearly she was present at least for this last event and probably more.
It is POSSIBLE, pending discussion with your attorney, to keep her on in sales.
It is IMPOSSIBLE to promote her.
Katrina has prima facie evidence of epic-level racism on the part of an employee. Not only that but now she is aware that the employee has made statements indicating that she plans to discriminate in personnel decisions should she be placed in a position to make such.
That means, if she is promoted and behaves that way, that the company is liable, even beyond normal liability, since Katrina knew ahead of time about the potential for workplace discrimination.
Even keeping her on board might be an issue if she currently has any supervisory capacity.
This is a tough one. Everyone’s brought up some really good stuff and I feel like I’m just adding to the chorus.
I’d say promote her or not promote her as per her job performance–strictly her job performance. And then sit her down and explain exactly what happened and why Katina is so repelled by her behaviour, and tell her that if there’s any sign that her views are impacting her job performance, she’ll be due for a downsizing or a layoff. Like even sven said, honesty is the best policy.
This is really, really tricky though. I feel like I should send you an evil latte or something, Skald.
I didn’t pick the state for the hypothetical by accident. Georgia’s an at-will state; Katina can fire Anne because she doesn’t like her perfume. I got fired from a dealership (though not a management position) because I refused to scoop rebates. So I’m not sure if Katina would need to consult her attorney. Hopefully Bricker or Oakminster or Elendil’s Heir will wander in.
But as for the rest of it … even though I’m one of the persons drunk!Anne would fire if she could, I’m not convinced that merely espousing such views while grieving and drunk is proof that is the way she’d actually behave. Bear in mind that Katina’s known her for years and never seen a hint of this before. I think it’s immoral to punish people for what they believe, no matter how odious their beliefs are. I think that firing her for what she MIGHT do is wrong. She deserves the chance to show that she can control herself.
And some beliefs go very deep. Intellectually I’m convinced that the God of the Bible, if he exists, is history’s greatest villain; but there’s a tiny part of me that wanted to pray when m mother was dying, because I was raised to believe that God exists and is benevolent. I can easily imagine someone being raised in a racist household, rejecting the tenets of said prejudice on an intellectually level, but still having the odd jot of racism deep in her heart that only surfaced under stress and with the aid of Glenfiddich.
Someone upthread wondered how hypothetical this is, implicitly wondering if I were asking for work advice in a roundabout way. It’s entirely hypothetical and I’m not, which is good because I agree that it’s tough. I think firing her is the safest course of action but unethical, whereas keeping her on or promoting her is really risky.
Oh. Well, then, no evil latte for you. 
(I concur with you, which is why I’m erring on the side of “keep her, but keep an eye on her”.)
I actually asked my dad this, as he’s in management where he works. I’ll see what he has to say.
Were I Katina, Anne would be summarily out on her bigoted butt the next morning, no questions asked, here’s your last check, security will stand and watch while you clean out your desk, you’re not permitted to touch a computer or anything else sensitive again. Here’s why:
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The “it wasn’t company time” thing is a non-starter, to me. She was in the presence of co-workers and superiors, so her behavior should have been modified accordingly. An adult, professional person should know that you don’t act the same way amongst people from work as you might with your personal friends or in the privacy of your home.
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The “she was in mourning” is a non-starter to me. People deal with the deaths of people much closer than a boss and in even more tragic circumstances than a car accident every day without getting fall-down, pass out drunk. There were undoubtedly people at this same event who were not nearly as intoxicated. She made the choice to drink, drink to excess, and beyond. No one forced the booze down her gullet.
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In vino veritas. Racism is a pervasive thing. Just because Anne wasn’t hurling slurs (or even muttering them under her breath) at co-workers or customers doesn’t mean that her racist attitudes weren’t influencing her work decisions. And now that they’re out in the open and known to Katina, Katina has a responsibility to make sure that her minority employees and customers are not adversely affected by Anne’s racism, and the only way to be sure that they won’t is to remove Anne from the picture.
It sucks that this is how Anne’s career flames out. But you know what sucks more? Being a racist. (And being a drunken racist sucks even more than that.) She deserves no further consideration nor sympathy. She brought this on herself.
I must say, this is remarkably detailed for a hypothetical, Skald.
Don’t pay attention to what a drunk says, though. Let it go.
You’re new to my silly hypotheticals, I take it. I haven’t any friends in a four-way marriage, or a lesbian lover who reveals a huge lie on an employee’s resume, or any knowledge of hidden Elf kingdoms in Antarctica.
I did abandon my pet velociraptor in the Savage Land though. She was crying when I left, but only a little; she knew she could get a job in the States again after her long career in porn.
Have I mentioned lately that I love you and would want to bear your children if I could have and wanted any children, which I can’t and don’t?
As a hypothetical, I would have quit any company that had a drinking culture to start with. So I don’t think I’d have been in Katina’s shoes since I’d have been gone long ago.
I’ve been working with my current team for ten years. I’ve never been to a happy hour with them. I’ve been out to dinner with them, and have had a glass of wine.
May I ask why the drinking culture would be an automatic I’m-gonna-quit for you?
I’ve worked in three or four jobs in which the crew regularly got together for post-work drinks. It never bothered me.
This person can no longer be trusted in any supervisory capacity. Katina can’t unhear it. She has information that makes her choices potentially very very damaging.
As for it not being a company event, if an event includes your boss? It’s a company event.
There’s nothing unethical about determining that someone is a danger to the ethics and bottom line of your company. Keeping her around is all downside. Firing is all upside.
Was Mike’s funeral a company event? Presumably his family paid for it, but I’m sure, in this scenario, that Katina, Anne, and Katina’s father all attended.
I’m sorry, but I don’t even begin to understand how anyone could feel she should keep her job, let alone get a promotion. The reality is there is no upside to keeping her, and a huge amount of liability. Why anyone would want somebody like that representing their company, and making decisions that could cost them money, is beyond me. How can you expect her boss to ignore her stated intentions to break the law, and expose her to liability? You have to trust the people you work with, and Anne compromised that by being untrustworthy.
To all of you who excuse such behavior because she was drunk, do you really think those aren’t (in part) her true beliefs? I know this is a hypothetical, but it’s pretty illustrative of why racism is so pervasive when people are not willing to punish such behavior even when it is the moral and economically advantageous thing to do. It’s nice that you guys can be so forgiving and accommodating to racists and bigots, but it’s not so easy to do so when your resume is the one that get thrown out for having an ethnic name, or you get passed up for a promotion because of your background.
It is a Peter Principle case. Her bigotry will not harm her present job. But elevating her may result in her bigotry harming the morale or the business. Keep her where she is.
This is just my opinion but I would not let it slide. Promotions should be judged on work performance, however, if I was in Katina’s position, I’d probably let my own feeling judge how I handled this situation and absolutely not promote Ann. I wouldn’t want to risk the jobs of the other employees should Ann decide to discriminate against certain employees based on their race.
It should be noted that one should never drink to that point with coworkers, ESPECIALLY higher-ups. She loaded her own gun when she made that choice.
Because SHE HASN’T DONE ANYTHING AT WORK YET. Some of us feel that it’s immoralor unethical or unfair to punish her for what she thinks rather than what she does, and perhaps that a drunken rambling is not necessarily indicative of what her actual behavior is or would be. Particularly since Katina is so surprised by Anne’s remarks.
It’s not just a matter of being forgiving. It’s a matter of being just. Katina has no knowledge of Anne doing anything worth firing, in my opinion. More below.
You have a point here some persons may not appreciate, so I’ll give a little more detail. At the car dealership I worked at, the sales manager was one of the people whom the salesmen & -women went to at the desk during negotiatons; they didn’t have hiring, firing, or scheduling power. Nor could they unilaterially control the interest rates a customer got if getting a loan. Also they were paid largely on commission, which was a positiive disincentive to trying to chase off customers just because of their race.
Would a racist sales manager try to give a customer s/he was prejudiced against a “bad” deal? Not if it would cost a sale. And the job is screwing the customer as much as the customer will let you anyway.
That might be harder than you think. If Anne doesn’t drink much, she may well not have a good feeling for how much it takes her to get drunk.
Fire the bitch. You can’t hold onto somebody who you know does not respect and value every customer and coworker.
The hypothetical isn’t very realistic, by the way. Somebody that racist wouldn’t really be able to hide it consistently.