How would you know? The person’s HIDING it, after all.
ETA: I know a good number of black folks who are blisteringly racist in private (read: among other black people) and extraordinarily good at hiding it in public (read: inthe company of white people). So I don’t have much difficulty believing the converse could be true.
Also, I am quite sure I don’t have a single person on my team who respects and values every customer and coworker, merely because I know we have a good number of homophobes. Should I fire all of them?
yeah, she kind of did, though. She got drunk at a work related function and told her employer she would break employment laws if she could. Imagine if someonbe expressed those views duruing a job interview. would they ever be hired?
No, you simply cannot justify even keeping an employee this unstable on, much less promoting her to a position of power. Drunkeness is no excuse. Alcohol just exposes what people really are. No way you can take a chance with this kind of potential liability. This woman is a plane wreck waiting to happen.
Because I don’t believe its professional or appropriate. I have no problem with social drinking. I have no problem with “a beer or a glass of wine” at a work related dinner. Getting drunk with your coworkers is like sleeping with them - too many things can go wrong and you’d better trust these people NOT to shoot you in the back, because you are handing them a gun.
I can respect that. Of course, another way of looking at it is that, if you’re the one person staying sober in the group, you can gain an advantage over your colleagues and use the knowledge gained during their moments of weakness to blackmail them into doing your business or torpedo their chances for a promotion you’re both aiming for.
Also, if Athena had not intended pharm reps to have reckless sex with one another, she would not have made them all hot.
Yep, but that doesn’t mean I’d PROMOTE them. i.e. getting drunk with your coworker is career limiting if I’m your boss, not necessarily career ending. I’m not likely to fire you for just getting drunk during happy hour - unless you’d behave inappropriately to a coworker or make racist statements, in which case, it being a work related event (though not work itself) you are opening me up to a liability I’m not anxious to take on.
For me, being in an atmosphere where that is a regular occurrence is not acceptable - I’ve been sexually harassed at work - I’m not eager to put myself into a situation where people are stupid on purpose and my income is dependent on putting up with it or making a stink..
Except that it’s explicit that this incident was exceptional. The group goes out drinking on a regula basis, and Katina has noted that Anne does NOT party like the rest.
But I said I wouldn’t have promoted any of them, the rest of the partiers aren’t promotional and now Anne isn’t either. I’d be looking outside for my management.
I don’t think any exceptions are allowed for the “don’t get drunk and tell your boss you hate niggers” rule. That tends to be a first strike and you’re out type of thing.
I’d want to have a sober conversation with her later. If she insisted she couldn’t remember what had transpired, I’d ask her about her feelings on race. If she insisted that she wasn’t a racist, I’d give her the promotion. At the first inkling of racism affecting her decisions, she’d be gone. Until her actions reflect her drunken words, whether what she said was what she actually believes or not is irrelevant. Privately held beliefs are not the same as actions.
Anybody who thinks they aren’t prejudiced in one manner or another is fooling him/herself. We are all bigots in one way or another, because that’s how the human brain works. You try to categorize things and somewhere along the way a category is going to be too broad.
Charging people with thought crimes isn’t going to get rid of that, nor is it necessarily going to protect your company. Anne might be careful enough to keep her thoughts to herself except when she is in a drunken, grief-stricken rage, but that’s no guarantee that the person you promote in her place who has entirely subconscious bigotry and always says the right thing is going to show, over the course of several years, that whenever he has the opportunity to hire a white male over a woman or a POC that he does so.
The guy who never said a bad word about anybody but only hired white men is the liability. Not the woman who mumbled barely coherently while she was drunk off her ass.
Now, I’m not saying Anne is a good person or I’d want to hang out with her, but I’m troubled by the idea of firing people based on thought crimes. It’s what happens at work that matters.
All that means is you have what they call a ticking time bomb. Everything MIGHT be ok until the next time she gets drunk.
In the meantime, how can she be trusted to give a fair shake to the minority employees she supervises? And trust is necessary if Katina is going to give her control over the careers of lower lever staff. It is very unlikely she will be able to tell by Anna’s written evaluations whether she is being biased or not.
But maybe Katina will get lucky and Anna resort to the term “darkie” in her writings.
Remember that Louisiana judge a couple of years back who wouldn’t marry interracial couples? He wasn’t a racist, oh no, he cared about the children! He said so.
Almost every racist is going to insist that they are not racists.
And a ticking time bomb you know about, and therefore can be liable for in court. Get called in front of a judge and you can’t say “your Honor, I had no idea and if I did, I would have never tolerated this in my place of business!”
Sure Katina can. All she need do is not tell anyone what she heard. That’s unwise, of course, as it precludes her from sitting down with Anne, calling her out on what she said, and making it clear that no racist actions will be tolerated. And, if I haven’t made it clear ere now, I think the rambling precludes making Anne sales director or general manager.
I did. Which makes it more difficult to understand the conclusion she reached and that I quoted. Deciding to go ahead and promote her because she says she is not a racist (while sober and more aware of the implications of what she’s saying) is ridiculous.
And it’s not the same as deciding not to promote her based on what she says while drunk. You have more information to rely on, including the fact the she got stupid drunk in the presence of her boss and co-workers, which is already a warning sign, and the fact that her words while drunk were specifically job-related and particularly inappropriate and indicative of criminal intent. Well, perhaps not criminal – I don’t know that race-based discrimination in the workplace is criminal per se, but it is certainly in violation of the law.
Peeta’s premise is false. Everybody isn’t a racist. Everybody isn’t a bigot. I dislike the meme that they are. I do not harbor any racist feelings. I know lots of other people who do not.
The kimnd of behavior decribed in the OP is not not typical and normal and cannot be overlooked. That woman displayed irrational and hostile thinking that cannot be concealed or separated from her judgement on people as customers, coworkers or employees. Reality doesn’t work like your hypotheticals. If she really has these feelings, then they will affect her work, period. It would be completely irresponsible to give her any power.
Would you hire somebody who expressed those feelings in a job interview, yes or no?
Skald, What if she got drunk and said she’d like to rob the safe? What if she said she wanted to swindle customers? Is there anything you would not be willing to overlook, or does being drunk excuse everything?
ETA, and you think Katina should compound her liability by committing perjury? Seriously? What if the janitor overheard them? Should Katina take care of him, just to be safe.
