What kind of drunken shenanigans would you have to pull before the pilot says, “okay bubba, we’re landing this plane just to throw your ass of it.” Really, I mean what … the … hell?
Gilbert Gottfried was fired from Aflac when he made insensitive jokes about the tsunami in Japan. AFAIK, he was not acting as an Aflac representative when he made the jokes; but he was still identified with the company even in his free time. ssnce Aflaac does a lot of business with Japan, he damaged the company’s reputation.
A military officer can be court-martialed for disparaging the Commander-In-Chief, even if he does it outside of ‘working hours’.
A pilot can lose his license for getting a DUI in his car while he’s on holiday.
I can tell you that if I pulled something like that, I would be fired because a) my drunkeness prevented me from making my meeting; b) my bad behavior got the company’s name in the paper c) I am expected to travel a lot and I just got myself banned from the country’s major air carrier; d) I’ve shown that I lack judgement and cannot be trusted to behave in a mature manner whil on company business.
Any one of those would be fireable IMO.
I disagree. Whether they are executives or not, if they are flying on company business and pull a stunt like that, I’d fire their asses immediately. Even if they were on vacation, I’d probably still fire them.
Bingo. While you are traveling on business, you are a representative of your company, and you’re effectively “on the clock”. It’s really no different from being drunk in the office and disrupting your place of business.
And, as has been pointed out, RiM isn’t doing very well right now, and the last thing they need is more bad publicity.
RIM is an iconic company within Canada. It’s their GM, Microsoft, and Apple all in one. And it’s about to go under due to extremely poor executive decision-making over the last several years, which, since it’s extremely enmeshed with the Canadian economy to the point of being “too big to fail,” means it will be requiring a huge bailout at public expense.
The last thing it needs is to look soft on poor decision-making by these executives, or look irresponsible in any way in advance of coming to Parliament with hat in hand. They had no choice but to fire these people.
The results of terrible publicity are not abstract- they cost business,
i.e. money. Who wants to do business with a company who promotes
people like these two dorks to positions of high responsibility???
Another thing to consider is liability exposure to the airline and all the
other passengers. That is going to wind up costing the employer another
pretty penny. In the US litigation cost could be expected to be in the
millions for an episode like this. Maybe in Canada they can hold it down
to actual out-of-pocket losses, or nearly so.
I’m baffled by this sentence from the OP:
Well, of course whether you get fired depends on who you work for. How could it even conceivably be otherwise?
And also of course, it makes perfect sense to hold executives to a different standard than ordinary workers, since that’s exactly what being executives means. You get paid more because you’re held to a higher standard. Did you think they earned those big bucks just by virtue of being born into an old-boys family? Well, maybe that’s how it often works out, but it’s not how it’s supposed to.
Meanwhile, the company is going to end up sued by a whole lot of different people over this, and by the merits of the case, they’re going to lose. These two yahoos therefore directly cost the company a large sum of money. When people cost their companies a large sum of money, they get fired, and HR (or in this case, the Board) kicks themselves for not having done so before the loss.
Stupidity has consequences. Fair or not,that’s life.
On a personal level, I’m pleased as punch those assholes got fired. I already hate obnoxious drunks, let alone hose so drunk they disrupt the lives and business of what, 200 people? Fuck them, they had it coming
From OP link to news story:
I didn’t realize this was an international flight. That makes the potential liability
exposure drastically worse. The $71756 the two two dorks had to pay already is
only $225 per passenger for the 312 other passengers, and is not going to come close
to the cost of disruption for an international flight.
I’d fire them, and I’d expect to be fired (assuming the aircrew weren’t massively overreacting).
I sense a bit of disagreement with my position. Just a tad.
In truth, I hadn’t thought out the appropriate consequences given that they were “flying on the company’s dime” to quote several of you. In that light, in the sense that they were on the job at the time, you are right - they should be canned.
But, it seems to me that the main reason, and maybe the only reason it’s come to all this is because they work for RIM. As has been mentioned upthread, RIM is fast becoming a Canadian icon and, almost as fast, is going down the tubes. As a result, anything involving RIM (and apparently its employees) is news. And, as put forward by a number of you, the company cant be seen now, of all times, to tolerate idiocy from anyone in its employ. I still think if they worked for Noranda Mines or Asshole Asbestos Inc, they’d be employed.
From your description I fly at least as much as you and this is one of my pet peeves.
Not to pick on you specifically but I would really prefer that folks did not see airports and planes as drinking opportunities. In general, a lot of folks don’t hold their liquor as well as they think they do, and it affects their functioning in negative ways.
When I’m out in the world going about my daily business I shouldn’t expect to have to deal with people drunk out of their heads, and airports and planes should be in the same category.
Just sayin’
If they’re not bright enough to understand that working for RiM puts them under greater-than-usual scrutiny, then they probably shouldn’t be executives at RiM.
I would agree that these executives should not have a RIM job.
On a more serious note, I think that if they had worked for Noranda Mines or Asshole Asbestos Inc, they still would have been fired - we just would not have heard about it.
Why? Airports and airplanes are drinking opportunities. I would say that if you don’t want to encounter inebriated people don’t go to places where liquor is served.
Certainly in my world (finances, these days) and my firm that would have done it. I can think of two examples in my immediate circle.
-
An FA got drunk and yelled obscenities at a presentation.
-
A young FA got drunk and belligerent after hours at a bar and nowhere near the HQ during a training trip. But because he attempted to bully the bartender (a woman for what that’s worth) using his business card and such they bounced his ass.
Not only should they be fired, but they should be put on a lifetime “no-fly” list. The latter should apply to anyone who disrupts a plane enough to force a landing.
Even so, then as executives of RIM they should know what a precarious position their company is in. To act so irresponsibly when so much is on the line is an even bigger deal, in my book.
Well, they also used to be smoking opportunities, but they no longer are. Are does not equal must be.
Airports and planes PRIMARILY function as public transportation, not as drinking establishments. To suggest avoiding them for this non-primary function is unreasonable to the extreme. But you knew that.