Not to mention that while you do represent the company, the company (to a certain extent) represents you.
I would not want a neighbor to know that I work for that I work for a company that spreads such vile messages.
I am just asking if anyone else thinks this company’s actions may be over the top. Sometimes something is wrong but there really isn’t anything to be done about it, but that doesn’t mean it should never be discussed in the first place.
I’m not trying to equate them, but I’m trying to figure out what you consider harassment. You called seeing the slogans drawn in the dirt “constant visual harassment”, which someone might use to describe the yard sign or MAGA-hat-wearing-coworker, but you called those things “innocuous and trivial” while the post immediately above yours calls wearing a MAGA hat “unacceptable”.
Now, if they were written on a subway wall…
Wrong can have lots of meanings. Legally? No, it does not appear so. Morally? Not really seeing that either. Financially? It might be bad business for a company in Oregon to allow / tacitly endorse a publicly right-leaning political perspective, but I suspect the actual harm the company suffers from it will likely be minimal (who knows though, maybe a lefty mob from Portland will smash the windows or torch the place). Is it not very nice? No, it’s not particularly nice, but it’s about on-par with mean things that routinely get said about Republicans right here on the SDMB.
I think that it’s unprofessional, and inappropriate for a business environment. Since it sounds like management has turned a blind eye to it, that’s encouraged the employees to keep doing that stuff.
Are you being overly sensitive to it? Maybe. I imagine that the conservative posters on this thread wouldn’t be happy working in an environment where their co-workers were putting up “Impeach the Orange Pussy-Grabber” signs, either.
As Procrustus notes, unless your state has some specific laws about political speech in the workplace, it’s probably not something that’s legally actionable, as political orientation isn’t a protected class. And, as you note, since all of this seems to be being tacitly encouraged by management, stirring the pot isn’t likely to end well for you.
IMO, it’s low-level trolling. Annoying, for sure, and maybe hard to tune out, but I’m not seeing a good way to discourage it that’s not likely to lead to more overt harassment.
They are doing all this to yank my chain because I asked someone, months after it started, why it is happening? Wouldn’t it just be easier if you just said that you don’t see a problem with what is being written because you agree with it and/or you like it because it it gets the right people upset?
Most likely not.
An assumption based on??? Apparently, you haven’t worked in the trucking industry. Generally, drivers spend very little time at the back of the trailer except to unlock and open the doors. Dock workers, random people in parking lots, employees of companies where the trailers sit all are more likely to be inclined to write in the dirt on a semi-trailer door. All that can be reasonably inferred from this story is that the owners/management of the company where Czarcasm works deem the messages not worth the expense of washing trailers more often than normal. Methinks we’re getting a bit of confirmation bias here, as well. If an inventory were to be done of all writing on all trailers on the lot at any given time, I suspect one would find many more messages/drawings that management has decided were not worth the expense to wash off.
Yup.
It’s clear to me that the company isn’t interested in preventing the spread of hateful messages about Democrats and (potential) immigrants. Were I a Democrat or an immigrant in that situation, I would feel threatened and marginalized.
So, yes, I would feel I were in a hostile environment, in a non-legal sense. I would feel intimidated into keeping my thoughts and beliefs to myself, and I would suspect that people known to be Democrats and immigrants would face disparate treatment from co-workers and management.
I wouldn’t be happy having to deal with that all day every day, and no doubt it wears on your health, mental and otherwise.
But I can’t say that I know whether it is a “hostile workplace environment” in an employment law sense.
Yes, it’s over the top. No, there’s nothing you can do about it other than (a) quitting, or (b) speaking out in one form or another.
I work for an insurance agency and, surprisingly, it’s a pretty lefty place - we even get Christmas cards from Mother Jones magazine, we have anti-Individual-1 reading material in the waiting room, etc. (What we don’t have are messages which demean and alienate over 1/2 of the population, which is why I call your situation “over the top”.)
And if any of our clients or employees don’t like it, they are perfectly free to shut up or go elsewhere. And that is the situation you’re in.
Let me know when your income depends on whether you post on the SDMB.
They do this over 200 times a day, every day, to yank your chain? This sounds unlikely if you are as discreet as you earler claimed. Or maybe they don’t give a shit about you one way or the other and do it for other reasons of their own. Do you believe they obsess over you?
Some Dopers seem to claim that the partisan divide in U.S.A. is nothing new. Were inscriptionss like that really common back in, say, the 1960s or 1970s? Sure LBJ was bad-mouthed but that was for letting thousands of G.I.'s die, and it wasn’t an entire party that was disparaged. In OP’s example the entire Democratic Party ifs denigrated for … for what exactly? Proposing a hike to the minimum wage?
If your job required you to drive a truck inscribed “Republicans are Nazis” would that also be a trivial situation?
I’m just talking about how people would take it personally, not if it was legal or not.
So you have my answer.
I don’t mean to put too fine a point on it, but you seem resentful of your employer because you apparently lack the marketable skills to find employment elsewhere and / or the financial means to weather the transition. Given those apparent circumstances, I’d suggest you might try having a bit more gratitude towards your employer for providing you the means to support your family that you apparently can’t obtain elsewhere.
No they do not do it to “yank my chain”, as I have said over and over again. I do not discuss politics at work.
Certainly denigrating broad swaths of political opponents has become more common in recent years. HRC had her “deplorables” comment, and before that Romney had his “47%” comment.
If I were in that situation I’d either ignore it or quit. If Czarcasm can’t do that, maybe he can wipe / wash it off the particular trailer he is driving that day. If he can’t do it at the pickup point, perhaps down the road a bit, or the first time he stops for fuel.
20 minute ago, in post #67, you said that they are doing it to yank your chain:
Then who, if not you, is targeted by the hostility? Maybe you should relocate and retrain for a better job.