As I’ve said elsewhere, these hypos can only be so long, man. I actually put in more details about the thre surefire fires, then decided broad strokes were adequate. Otherwise I’d end up writing stories about all 16 team members.
No, it won’t. However, if you’re willing to lie about it, there’s a pretty good chance that a chunk of your office knows your ethical stance.
You don’t know. That’s the problem: you don’t know who has heard this OR OTHER SIMILAR remarks. You think she has no history; are you absolutely positively certain that her previous manager didn’t get an earful too and just decide to keep his head down and mouth shut too, just like you’re doing?
Like I said, you think she doesn’t. Moreover, if that million-view Youtube hits the CEO’s desk, it’s not going to be your decision on whether to fire her, nor is the fact that it is a “first offense” going to protect either one of you.
Probably not, but I’d be looking diligently for a replacement from some other company. If you tolerate that crap from her, what else will you as her boss tolerate, and what does that say about your ethical standards? Also, that good job she’s done isn’t worth the fallout on me and mine if she lets slip in front of my team.
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The scenario specifes that an investigation was done into Sasha’s behavior, so while I cannot know with Cartesian certainty that she has no history of such beahvior at work, it’s not an unreasonable assumption.
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But we were talking about a possible lawsuit. For that purpose it matters what a jury c will believe that I knew. Sine I will smack Sasha down at the first instance of her going all Prussian Blue on anybody; since I myself am a black man in an interracial marriage and thus am obviously not sympathetic to her views; and since no one can show that I overheard the offensive remarks, I feel fairly safe.
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But all that’s pragmatic. On an ethical level, I just do not believe I have the right to police her beliefs, I’ll slap her down if I heabr so much as a whisper of impropriety. But t she is a hard worker and competent salesperson, and I’m not her daddy.
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The main purpose of this post was to use the phrase “Carteisan certainty,” which I do not get to unlimber often enough.
I was a sales manager. I’m a father and a teacher now.
Emily is toast. In all of my roles, I work with people who will work with me. I’ve had troublesome employees who turned it around and became better. We kept them. I’ve had employees who blew me off and they were out the door. She could be curing people of cancer but if it’s affecting her work then she shouldn’t be in sales.
Sasha’s comments are definitely not cool and I’m surprised the manager didn’t talk to her about that. She seems intelligent enough to be given the hint that such comments are never to be made on company premises. As I didn’t actually witness it, I may just remind her or the group that racist comments are not permitted and leave it at that.
I actually was in Coté’s shoes. It was my son and not a spouse, but I wasn’t as productive for a while after. The company was really understanding. Six months isn’t an unreasonable length of time to wait for someone to get back on their feet. It it drags on too long then unfortunately she’ll have to go.
When my firstborn son died in 1996, I started on a self-destructive rampage that hurt my work performance badly. I am still amazed that my then-boss did not can me; he’d have been justified.
Speakingof Sasha and witnessing stuff: a lot of posters have cast doubt on the reliability of what the viewpint character heard, given that they never saw Sasha and only one voice was heard. While I certainly did not intend to leave such uncertanty, I did imagine the conversation as having been on a cell phone and no one having ever uttered Sasha’s name during the conversation, so those people have a point. How willing would you be to confront Sasha given that uncertainty?
Not willing at all. You are talking about a half-heard conversation in a non-work setting. As far as the company is concerned, Sasha is doing her job. I might keep it in the back of my mind for future reference. But if I “must” fire someone, I’d rather fire the weakest performer.
Cote is more sympathetic than Emily because she is working through a personal tragedy while Cote is wasting company time and resources with her militant activism (which also has a potential to put the company at risk). Therefore I would try to work with Cote to improve her performance (or maybe suggest a temporary leave of absence if she feels she can’t do her job). Emily, I would just work with HR and get the ball rolling on the termination process.
This is the central issue in forming an answer. Not to be a broken record, but IMO that is the only ethical presumption unless either you own the company, or the people who do have specifically instructed you to optimize something other than their long term financial interest. And you have to act within the law (which is probably redundant since breaking the law is highly unlikely to serve the long term financial interests of the owners).
What you personally think of people who disapprove of interracial marriage, use disparaging terms for other races or support BLM for that matter, should be irrelevant.
So between EMILY and Sasha it’s a matter of who it costs more to keep, considering also risk of loss. That depends on specifics of the company which weren’t specified. In a lot of real world cases the fact that somebody has opinions like Sasha’s is neither here nor there practically speaking for the company’s finances. OTOH in all situations it costs the owners to have deliberately non-productive employees like EMILY.
But the specific circumstances might be exceptional, and the risk of Sasha causing financially costly embarrassment is the greater concern. The point is that it shouldn’t have anything to do with what the manager personally thinks of Sasha’s worldview v EMILY’s. That would be ignoring your fiduciary duty and is unethical.
As seems the consensus, the case of an employee rendered temporarily ineffective by a person situation is a matter of time and the same consideration of bad publicity firing the person too soon, if in fact the tragedy was something as rare and attention getting as a loved one being the (black, especially, it gets more attention now, why else is it the subject of the scenario 
) victim of a questionable killing by the police.
And, one more thing: why couldn’t they have been named Mark, Michael and Sean?
Look at Sasha from a cost-benefit analysis. What will it cost you in current & future clients when one of her rants gets made public? Keeping Sasha is the same thinking as NASA. Hey there are a few problems but things have been great so far … Oh shit!
Where I work, laid off means two weeks’ pay for every year of service. BIG difference.
I’d fire both Sasha and Emily. Sasha is a social liability. I don’t care if she was taking a shit on break and chatting with a friend, she’s still spouting vile racist BS on company property and on company time. Only a matter of time until that ticking ball of racism blows up in a way that hurts the company and/or its employees. Emily has been warned more than once to keep her political activism out of the workplace and hasn’t listen, so she goes too, even if personally I support her political position.
Emily’s gone, for the highlighted reason. She’s using company resources for personal stuff. She’s been told to stop it and she refused.
Split her area between Sasha and Cote. If Cote doesn’t shape up soon, can her and hire someone new to handle that territory.
Fire Emily. She has been warned about reading the Dope at work-- I mean, working on her activism.
Take Sasha aside, and without being specific, tell her you heard her say something inappropriately racist, and whatever her opinions, be more discreet. After all, you didn’t hear the whole conversation. She could have been joking (albeit in poor taste), or quoting something. It would probably be bad for morale to fire her, since everyone in the office would ASSUME is was for the issue that was out of her control with the other company, and if people are worried that they could get fired at any moment for something like that happening to them, so matter how hard they worked to pick up the slack, it will make other people feel helpless.
Put Cote on probation, but give her some of the territory Emily has left behind that is practically selling itself, and hope that buoys her a little. If just one thing in her life, like work, suddenly picks up, maybe she’ll start doing better in general.
I’d get rid of Sasha, and manage the other two to improve their performance. If they don’t, they may end up on the chopping block later. With Sasha’s work divided between them they’ll have the opportunity to prove their worth, if they can.
But I’ve worked in HR long enough to know that Sasha is a huge liability. Even if her racism has not been an issue up to this point, she’s a ticking time bomb before she becomes a big liability. I’d have fired her on the spot when I overheard that shit in the bathroom.
What was Skald doing in the women’s restroom, anyway?
StG
Okay, I missed the part about Emily already being warned about using company resources for her personal activities. Since she’s already been warned, she can be fired to and I’ll hire someone new. No way am I keeping Sasha around.
That came later when I got into really self destructive behavior. I had ongoing issues the whole time. It took sobering up and stopping self medicating in order for me to work on the underlying issues.
They were more than fair, gave me more than the number of chances so I don’t feel bad about it looking back. Did at the time, but I was a drunk.
And I also don’t feel bad about suing them because you can’t fire people like that in Japan. Not even drunks. We settle for enough money to buy me some more time in bars.
As I posted, my response would be low key because it seems she’s smart enough to take the hint without coming right out and accusing her. I don’t ask questions where they are going to lie about it.
I was work friends with an older guy who worked out of his home in Georgia. He was a Sasha. You never had a clue he was racist and it wasn’t until I had worked with him for ten years that something slipped one night we both had too many.
To the people who’d fire Sasha, I’m curious - suppose Sasha never *said *a word, but you had the ability to read minds. When it’s time to lay off employees, would you selectively target the ones whom you knew harbored racist, sexist or other such opinions in their heads?
Probably not. But she did speak them, aloud, in public (what I’m assuming is workplace bathroom). I happened to be in the stall but it could have been anyone else who overheard it - that’s a ‘hostile work environment’ accusation waiting to happen.
If know for sure she never says a word, just harbors racist thoughts that she keeps to herself - well, that’s not going to impact any of her co-workers, so it does not create risk for me as her employer.
Do I have any way of knowing whether the bean counters’ decision is essential to the existence of the company?