Agreed. If Jasmine’s film resume is as hardcore as the OP suggests, anyone recognizing her opens themselves up to far more harm at their own place of employment than UPS would by having Debbie on the team.
Thank Zeus we finally disagree in a poll, Oak. I was getting worried.
Did you have your lawyer hat on when you wrote the Memo to Boss? Because I don’t see a reason to explain you-as-Debbie’s reasoning, and can think of several reasons not to. Why borrow trouble?
I am a manager, and I would hire her because:
- She is the most qualified applicant and had a great interview. One of her previous jobs was…adventurous, but that’s all it was, a previous job. Hell, it was even one she had in college. I just got out of college, I’ll give someone a pass on almost anything they did for money while in college.
- I like to pick a fight every now and then. Want to criticize my extremely qualified hire? Bring it on.
- Where does this stop? If we can’t hire someone because they’ve done porn and this is conservative Little Rock then how can we hire someone that is Jewish? Or black? Or too young? Or gay? Or anything that the majority of conservative Arkansas dwellers might not agree with(and no, I am not equating any of those with each other, just tossing out examples)? I know there are always shades of grey, but where do we draw the line?
It all comes back to number 1, the most important thing here. She is the most qualified, she had a great interview, she is the best candidate for the job. The job is hers.
Wow, you guys are goofy. If you think even one person in a thousand is going to recognize an actress from a grainy fetish video… the mind boggles.
Who said it was grainy?
What if Jasmine performed in porn such as, say, Sasha Grey did? (Or does: I don’t know much about her and am too lazy to read the wikipedia article.)
The point still stands, anyone that can recognize a heavily made up porn star out of all the makeup is probably not someone that wants to jump and down screaming “I saw Jasmine in a porno getting plowed by four 80 year old men at the same time!”
That would be just as damaging to their career (if not more so in “conservative business” as it would be to Jasmine’s.
No lawyer hat involved. Manager hat, which is considerably less comfortable. As a manager in a conservative company in the buckle of the bible belt, I think the reality is, you just can’t hire someone with that kind of baggage for a client-contact job.
That said, as a lawyer, I wouldn’t be that worried about Debbie’s memo. If she’d asked me, I’d probably suggest she not commit it to writing, but as far as I know, it is not illegal to discriminate on the basis of “she did porn”. Companies have a right to consider things like corporate image, staff relations, and possible negative publicity.
If Jasmine was a lawyer, and I was hiring a staff attorney, and she was skilled but with the porn history, I’d hire her in a heartbeat. I work for a non-profit, and as long as staff attorneys can try cases, I don’t care about their personal business. We don’t have to solicit cases. We have people beating down the door begging for representation. If somebody doesn’t like the fact that I’m an atheist with long hair, fine. they are welcome to go hire any private attorney they like. I get paid the same either way.
Sales isn’t like that. Image is very important to corporate success. I see no reason to risk anything bad happening when I can hire someone else that can handle the job without that risk.
A lot of people seem to be answering with what would feel best to do not what would be best for the company. If one in three people immediately recognized her she would not go one week before massive complaints started pouring in.
I agree with DigitalC in that as the hiring manager, my duty is to the company, and my decision should be in their best interest, not what I’d like to see happen in a perfect world.
In my staff attorney hijack, the employer has different priorities. I don’t need somebody with thousand dollar shoes and a degree from Harvard. I need ass kicking litigators that can slay dragons with toothpicks. Long as she has a ticket to practice and is in good standing with the bar, I don’t care if she paid her way through law school doing the donkey show in Tijuana.
To play with the hypothetical a bit, suppose you’re the sales manager and you discover that one of your *current *employees runs a commercial pornographic website as an ongoing sideline, in which he or she stars in some series of hardcore videos. Assume that there are no company rules barring an unrelated second job, and the person’s work at the day job is not suffering.
Do you tell the employee that he or she has to quit one job or the other?
Yes, because I meant that it should *literally * be done JUST that way. I liked the sentiment behind it. Of course it would be completely impossible, not to mention inefficient, to go to each customer, find their bosses and wives, bring them to your company and so on…good grief, switch to decaf.
If someone is that much of a hypocrite that they watch porn, and then threaten someone’s livelihood due to their being a participant IN said porn, they deserve to be shamed, sans “increase your business with our company” to make it nice and non-blackmail-ey.
The real sanctimonious attitude would be “OMG I’ve seen her in porn videos, I’m too pure and virtuous to have anything to do with her in a business capacity, so I’m going to be an asshole to the company that hired her”.
And FWIW, I’m a 51 year old grandmother who doesn’t even LIKE porn.
Get inexplicably aroused?
I didn’t vote, but I did want to point out that Brad has probably shot himself in the foot. Not only recognizing Jasmine, but also Googling several porn vids featuring her. In such a way to let Debbie make the conclusion that he knows his porn.
The dumbest of assholes wouldn’t open their mouths at this point. They would sneak a message or set up the rumor mill to Debbie’s boss. There is a reason people like him are called backstabbing little sneaks.
Right or wrong, it’s about what’s best for the company, so I wouldn’t hire her, because it’s just too big of a risk. Is it necessarily fair? No. A lot of well-qualified people get turned down for jobs for extremely stupid reasons, though, so I’m not feeling all that sorry for Jasmine. She’s a big girl, she chose to do some porn, there’s gonna be consequences. This is why doing porn is Generally A Very Bad Idea™.
Brad’s balls definitely need punching, though. He sounds like a real prick.
Close call. Anything more professional (as in, employee’s knowledge in most important) such as engineer, no contest hire her. Even something professional that includes significant interaction, such as trial lawyer/consultant.
But for sales rep it’s a tough call. Can I vote for ‘Second interview, and ask her how she’d handle it if a client brought up her past’ ? I mean, I don’t give a darn about why she did it and if she’s ‘reformed’ or BS like that, but I do care about how it affects her job.
Of course, were I an actual sales rep manager, I’d probably know better how to answer this.
Everyone has a past, and if you are going to not hire someone just because they did one thing wrong in their past, even though they are still the best candidate for the job, then you are retarded.
As for Brad, remind him that he needs to conduct himself in a manner that fits his position and that if he cannot do so you will have to let him go. If that doesn’t work, make sure to have a bucket of cold water handy if he ever gets frisky with Jasmine.
Finally Don didn’t seem to really mind working with her, he just would prefer to not have to, so as others have noted he is likely to retire soon and just try to ride it out with him until then.
Hire und punch.
She can deny everything. Brad’s creepiness opens up the possibility of Brad making a misstep with her, and I can watch him go out the door. Looks like a win/win.
Denying’s up to her, of course. But I wonder – how wise would it be of Debbie to even ask about a porn past in a follow-up interview? Certainly, if I were actually in this situation, I would think twice about it.
I voted ‘Ignore Brad, ignore the porn, & hire her.’ The punch to the crotch might make me feel good, but it’s an inappropriate response to the gravity of this situation. (Or virtually any situation, really. I won’t say that violence never solves problems, but the sorts of problems that need violence to solve them generally require a much higher level–firearms, or grenades. Or air strikes, or ICBMs.)
Just because one person happened to recognize her out of three interviewers, doesn’t mean that one in three customers will–she undoubtedly just got very unlucky. Maybe most people have watched some porn, but virtually nobody has ever seen more than a tiny fraction of what’s been produced. There aren’t enough hours in the day, or enough petroleum jelly in the jar. It’s possible that there will be a few sales lost due to someone recognizing her, but probably not nearly as many as her obvious skills will win. So from the company perspective, I’m not worried about it–especially since there are so many ways to deflect those sorts of questions in a business environment. And from the personal perspective–well, I do want to punch Brad in the crotch, so maybe my hiring decision is biased. A little.
The punch to the crotch is metaphorical, dude(ette).