This reminds me of a joke. The line immediately proceeding the punch line is, “I have to lay you or Jack off.”
It would have to be the former. Her job is to prospect for new cliens, and she’s doing that. She’s bringing in new customers.
My real life company?
They pound the pavemenets. Each field sales person sis assigned a geographic territory. Any business in that territory that does from at a certain level is that rep’s responsibility. In addition, the rep is supposed to seek out prospects and make cold calls. This will involve getting information from various databases, getting referrals, or just going door to door. Bringing in new business and helping old business grow is how the rep earns her bonus. It is possible to see a downturn in total business because of uncontrollable external factors (as is described in the OP as having happened to Sasha) but still earn a bonus because you’ve brought n a ton of new business. And since sales growth or decline is calculated on a year to year basis, if Sasha can bring in enough new clients, she can recover from the loss of ABC locations in the next year.
The OP is specific that the investigation reveals no such dilatory behavior on Sasha’s part. And bear in mind that a lot of databases-most, in fact–are not going to let her know ahead of time whether a specific business is black-owned or not. If she goes into a shop and discovers only later that the owner is black, she’s wasted her time, And if she’s avoiding neighborhoods where black businesses predominate, that would have been apparent in the investigation; it’s the first thing I would have checked.
The only way Sasha could have avoided black owned bsuinesses and have it not come up in a diliegent investigation woul dbe if her territory were in a area of the metro area – say Germantown – with few black-owned businesses in the first place. But she doesn’t control what territory she gets.
Why would I explain it? Once the Youtube video surfaced, I would fire her. But I wouldn’t need to explain why I didn’t fire her for something not in her file, because there’s notingin her file. Othess have noted that no matter how certain the hypotthical manager is that she correctly identified Sasha as the speaker of the Mandingo remark,she never actually saw Sasha, and there are no other witnesses. the manager would be an idiot to put it in Sasha’s personnel file. Doing such a thing can only come back to bite the manager.
One was a serial sexual haraser. One was an embezzler. One got caught with a ton of porn on his work computer. This was all in the OP,
Because to protect ourselves we have to assume that eventually she will let a “nigger” or “tarbaby” or “spearchucker”, etc. slip out in public (like slash2k states even on facebook or youtube) and all of the profits she made and more are gging to pay the attorneys and lawsuit settlements.
Fire Emily for performance and using work hours for personal business.
Have a serious conversation with Sasha about what you overheard. What if a client had been in the bathroom stall? How would that reflect on the business? I would put her on suspension.
Cote needs some help. As an employer you can only do so much. I would also have a conversation with her, maybe some bereavement leave, so she can decide what she wants to do.
I would need to know the gender of the three fired since I would fire both Sasha (reason stated above) and Emily for continuing to violate company policy after being fire. I wouldn’t want there to be a situation where I fired 5 women and no men however. I would then hire for the vacancy.
Once that video surfaces, somebody is going to ask you, “did you ever hear her make such remarks before?” How are you going to answer?
For example, if a nasty lawsuit blows up over something she said, are you willing to assert under oath that “oh no, you never heard such a thing, you never heard a rumor of such as thing, it’s completely a shock to you”? Are you willing to lie to your boss and your fellow employees?
If she’s slipped once, she’s slipped other times. There WILL be other witnesses. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that somebody else knows what she said in your presence. It’s even possible that she knows you were there, and took your silence to mean consent, or at least willful neglect. If she gets up on the witness stand and in an attempt to deflect blame and save her sorry ass (or drag you down too), says, “oh, Skald knows I say things like that, because she overheard me on this date,” then what? No matter what you say, it could bite you in the posterior.
Well, First of All™, what @Saint Cad said. And, second of all, the OP didn’t say any such thing: you did not identify Employee A as a “serial” sexual harasser, Employee B was identified as an “attempted” embezzler, and Employee C was not identified as having “a ton” of porn on his work computer. That data changes the calculus.
Reread the OP, dude. Sexual harassment, embezzlement, and porn are all expliclty mentioned…
I never mentioned overhearing the conversation to anyone elese, because doing so would tie my hands. So I’ll say I don’t recall. No one else in the bathroom stall; who is to say otherwise?
First off, no such lawsuit is likely. Calling someone a nigger is not a crime except among certain odd species of fascists. The first time someone complains that she has used language in the OP at work or in an identifable pubic way, I will hae written up. That is where the paper trail begins. Now I could give her a verbal warning after the bathroom incident, but given that we’re in an at-will state and I can fire her for any reason other than being ina protected class, I would be foolish to have done so; it might force my hand later without giving my
I won’t argue this because it’s unfalsifiable. If she goes ten years without a slip up, you’ll just say it hasn’t happened yet.
[QUOTEThere WILL be other witnesses. It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that somebody else knows what she said in your presence. It’s even possible that she knows you were there, and took your silence to mean consent, or at least willful neglect. If she gets up on the witness stand and in an attempt to deflect blame and save her sorry ass (or drag you down too), says, “oh, Skald knows I say things like that, because she overheard me on this date,” then what? No matter what you say, it could bite you in the posterior[/QUOTE]
No one else was in the stall with me. I was in intestinal distress when she said it (the too disgusting to relate line) and so can reasonably claim not to have been paying attention. In investigating her afterward I did not tell anyone why I was looking into her, because that would have been stupid, and I also picked some random coworkers to look into as well. Given that I, the real Skald, am a black man married to a “white” woman, I am the last person she’ll claim assented to her beliefs. (Of course that begs the question why we were in the same bathroom, but let’s assume it was a unisex.) I was in the stall when she entered and she is not Kara Zor-El. If she IS Supergirl, she (a) does not consider herself a white human being in hte first place and probably is under the influence of red kryptonite, and (b) is a demigod who can vaporize me by blinking and thus I am not gonna piss her off.
With regard to the racism, you can’t actually fire her for it because you did not actually witness her say it. You only heard someone who sounded remarkably like her say it - someone could have been imitating her. You were in the stall, after all. There’s actually a famous case in Scottish law about this - so famous I can’t remember the dates or names 
- where a man thought he overheard someone being murdered but the person was actually committing suicide.
So I’m going to revise my earlier judgement and let Sasha off entirely. The other two still go.
WEll, technically Sasha CAN be fired for the racism. You just shouldn’t say that that is the reason you’re firing her. She’ in an at-will state, o you don’t need a reason; giving a reason is just asking for trouble. So while hte layoffs are an excue to get rid of her if that is your desire, they’re not even a necessary one.
I am not defending Sasha’s bigotry. I am just saying that I’m not willing to police her beliefs. She is a good worker; Emily s a bad worker; Cote may recover. Somebody’s gotta go, so keep the one most likely to make the company money, not the one who is currently not doing her job ON PURPOSE.
I presume my motivations are purely financial?
The racial stuff is mostly background noise. Discounting the outliers of ABC and XYZ Corporations, Emily is objectively the worst employee. Cote is put on a performance improvement plan to get her numbers where they should be, or she is at risk of being fired. As long as Sasha’s numbers are trending upwards and her behavior is professional, there is no reason to take any action. Although I might be on watch for potentially HR violations based on her comments.
A lot of people are making the decision based on te desire to punsh vice and reward vitue. These people are apparenty confusing a for-profit corporation with the Justice Lague of America.
In other news – am I the only one bothered that Bruce Wane must be embezzling on a massive scale to pay for all Batman’s toys?
If you’re willing to lie, what makes you think nobody else is willing to lie about you? (And if the question is “did you ever hear her say anything like that?,” “I don’t recall” is a pitiful answer. If you can’t give a firm unequivocal NO, most of the people listening will assume the answer is “yes, but I’m too ashamed to tell the truth.” That also makes anything else you say in your own defense subject to question.)
Calling somebody that, however, can be harassment, creating a hostile work environment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, or various other civil torts, all of which can be more expensive and more detrimental to your company and to you personally than the attempted embezzler or the guy with the porn stash.
If the first time somebody complains is the same occasion that got the million Youtube hits, it’s too late, for her AND FOR YOU. She’ll be gone approximately 10 seconds after your HR dept or CEO sees the video, and you’ll be in job jeopardy.
You have no idea how long she’s gone without a slip up to date. All you know is that nobody has complained to you before now. You don’t know who else knows about her opinions, and who might be saving the information for use at a later time. For example, you overheard her; presumably she wasn’t talking to herself. Who was the other party to the conversation? Did they know of your presence?
If she’s this racist in conversation with a friend or a co-worker or whoever she was talking to, she’s been that racist with other friends/co-workers, or with the relatives who asked her why she didn’t go to Sis’s wedding, etc. That was casual racism; nothing in the OP says that she was in the middle of an emotional breakdown or other high-stress situation, when surprising and uncharacteristic thoughts may surface. She felt comfortable enough to say those things in ordinary conversation. It’s pretty unlikely she developed that kind of attitude in isolation, or that the wedding was the first/last/only time she was invited to socialize with people of another race or otherwise had reason to vocalize her opinions. Other people know; you’re not the only one in possession of secret knowledge. The only question is under what circumstances it’s going to be revealed.
A for-profit corporation is also known as “the moneybags to go after in a lawsuit.”
Also, bad publicity can be bad for profits.
Firing Sasha won’t protect me from her lying about me.
I swas mostly okng with that phrase. Uder the conditions of the OP, it’ unreasonable to think that anyone woul dbe able to prove that I heard Sasha made the statement, so if I had chosen to keep her on without counseling her on not being a racist bitch, I would deny ever having heard the remark. Who is to disprove me? Was the Invisible Woman in the bathroom stall with me? Was Odo there, disguised as the coat hook?
Sasha didnd’t know I was there. I’m her black boss who keeps a picture of his fair-skinned on his desk. I’m the last person she’d say it in front of.
Sasha has no history of calling co-workers or clients nigger or anything close ot it; that was established in the OP. Therefore if she does so in the future, it’s her first offense. I can fire her then if I want. My exposure is minimal, particularly sine I have the sense not to tell anyone about the bathroom remark unles I have also written her up for it.
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i investigated. Nobody has a bad word to say about her. And] I do in fact know that at least two other persons know about her opinions: her sister, and whomever she was talking to (presumably on the phone, since only one voice was heard in the bathroom). But I assume that every damn one of my employees has stuff they keep private. Sasha has a strong, rational, self-interested motive in not spouting off to customers and co-workers, and all evidence points to her not doing so. Until I have contrary evidence (or until she stops producing), she gets to stay.
Dude, this is Memphis. I assume half the people I meet are racists. That’s half the white peope and half the blacks, by the way, not all of either.
If someone within the company tells me they heard her saying something like described in the OP, that meets the criteria I described for escalating it. If her new brother in law, pissed at her for breaking his wife’s heart by boycotting the wedding, comes to me and says that she called him a nigger, I probably tell him that I lack authority to do anything about her private life (because I lack authority to do anything about her private life) and then give her a stern talking to about never embarassing the company.
Having said all that, I have a question. Suppose I’m one of Sasha’s clients. She’s done a good job servicing my company on behalf of her company. She gives my company excellent discounts, she makes sure all commitments get honored, she gives good technical support, she always brings donuts when on a site visit. I’m much happier with her than I was with the incompetent Emily, who never did shit without being chased down and spent five minutes of a product presentation talking about BLM>
If I overhear a person I think to be Sasha (but never see necause O was m a bathroom stall praying for death or a bowel movement, whichever could come quicker) makig the statements fromthe OP, should I demand Sasha’s removal?
I chose to believe it was a euphemism. 
This is what you said in your OP (all emphasis mine):
And this is what you said in Post #63 (again, all emphasis mine):
Maybe those things are semantically equivalent to you, but they aren’t to me. I would probably fire someone for “first offense” sexual harassment, I may or may not fire someone who only “attempted” to embezzle, and I may or may not fire a first offender for having porn on their work computer, depending on what kind of porn it is, and how much. Are we talking child pornography? Fired, no question. Are we talking a couple naked selfies of his wife? I dunno, how explicit is the company’s policy? “A ton” changes the calculus, and you absolutely did not specify that in the OP.
Actually, yeah, I’d probably fire the “attempted” embezzler, too. I mostly said that because I was salty about being told to re-read the OP, after I’d already explained what about the OP I’d taken issue with.
I’m serious about the porn guy, though. You didn’t say “a ton” before.