Social Media, Bigotry, and Employment

Would like to get everyone's thoughts on a topic that crops up more and more these days; where do we draw the line between a person's right to their opinion, and the expectation of employers to expect their employees not to say things that offend the public.

In summation April Sims, a dispatcher for Dallas 911, made racist comments on her Facebook page.

It should be noted that the comments were set to private. They were viewable only to her friends. Someone then forwarded the posts to the local Dallas station WFAA-TV, at which point she was fired for violating the department's social media policy.

Putting side any opinion on her view of black people; she posted this on Facebook viewable only to her friends. Someone took those posts and forwarded them to the media.

Would she have been deserving to be fired if she'd been at a bar with her friends and someone tape recorded her statement and sent it to the local news?

I changed the title slightly when I opened this Maxima. I hope you don't mind, but it fit the discussion you want to have here better. This is a conversation about having remarks you make about personal opinions on controversial topics and if those statements you meant to keep private should be grounds for firing someone.

In the particular case of the 911 operator, I actually find the racism less worrying than the fact that her posts revealed that she really didn't want to help black people when she was answering calls. It's one thing if it had been general racism. But the fact that her tone came off as 'I don't want to do my job for these people because they're black', well, that indicates that she's probably not the best person to have the job.

I find her to be a disgusting individual but I agree that it shouldn't have been reported to the department. With the obvious exception of if she posted something that made one of her friends fear for their lives.

Better thread title is better.

I see where you're coming from; but from what I've seen, she didn't actually mishandle or drop 911 calls from black callers or any other minority. By any account, she seemeed to do her job competently.

Based on the Dallas news article, DPD 911 got excoriated because they had too few operators. Why you'd can one for private ignorance, I'm not sure.

edited 7th Jun '13 9:01:30 AM by TheStarshipMaxima

I don't get why she shouldn't have been reported. If I had people I knew get genuinely worried about my ability to do my job and report me... fine. It doesn't matter if it's anonymous or not. Or from a taped conversion, Facebook, letters, emails or whatever. <shrugs>

If people who are concerned don't blow the whistle, terrible things can happen. -_-

I have no problem with the reporting of her. However... the way the employers went about what they did with it? Bit harsh. She should have been taken aside and told to keep her fingers still on some subjects and to amend her general attitude for professional reasons, rather. And, then watched to see if her attitude was affecting her performance.

edited 7th Jun '13 9:20:50 AM by Euodiachloris

Much good sense, as always Euo, but....don't you think terrible things happen when we start blowing whistles left, right, and center, for nothing more than the nebulous concept of "personal offense"??

I think the way that a lot of employers deal with these situations is... reinforcing of negative behaviours rather than preventing or fixing them. I mean, think about it, you lose your job because of some negative/prejudiced remarks you make about a certain group. Logically one would think about it and come to the conclusion that it was the remarks that caused the job loss but, in a lot of situations, a person might come to the conclusion that it's the fault of the group that they already disliked. Because of that particular group they lost their job - it becomes an affirmation of their prejudice in a way.

Euo, welcome to the wonderful world of Zero Tolerance policies. No rational thought is allowed, you must kneejerk to an extreme degree any time someone gets their figurative panties in a twist.

Good point. Why bother with decent managerial skills (that require work — and, middle mangers are soooo adverse to that).... when you can use the axe!

It's why I love employment tribunals: you won't get your job back, but you can still kick the bastard who fired you in the nuts if you have a case.

edited 7th Jun '13 9:39:38 AM by Euodiachloris

The issue is not being offended, the issue is whether or not her attitude had a reasonable chance of affecting her job performance as a 911 operator. Which, from reading the article, seems like a very real possibility. I don't see why we have to wait for someone to die because of her prejudices before doing something about it. In what world is it rational to put someone into such an important position, watch her spout intense racial-based loathing towards the very people she's supposed to be saving, and then do nothing about it until something inevitably goes wrong?

Whenever something terrible happens, people always go 'Well why didn't you do something about it when there were all these warning signs?' Well, these are very loud, neon glowing warning signs right here.

That is not to say that the woman didn't also reveal some very legitimate problems with her position that are not at all her fault, but she also clearly has some intense personal problems that were very directly related to her job.

Good points Kark, but seriously, are bigoted statements really an indication that someone is plotting to harm minorities??

Seriously, can anybody here look me in the eye and with a straight face say they've never said something sexist, racist, homophobic, sizist, or anti-Muslim, or whatever EVER?

And the lady had black friends. Yes, I know, the "But I have black friends" cliche. But if she had black people who she trusted enough to view her private FB account, I have to wonder how much her racism really affected her ability to do her job.

I have mixed feelings about this incident. On the one hand, I loathe the trend of employers digging into private online postings in order to find dirt on their employees. We've all heard the stories—employers that demand you give them your FB login info so they can see everything you've posted, private or public. (And if you don't use FB, they consider that "suspicious.") I firmly believe that it's none of your boss's goddamn business what you do outside of work or say privately.

However...in this particular instance, the nosiness may well have literally averted disaster. Having been given the information that one of their dispatchers was a capital-R Racist, if the emergency department had kept her on board, they would have been knowingly putting the safety of the black members of the community in the hands of someone who didn't give a damn about their safety. That seems reckless. It's one thing to say "Well, as long as she didn't let it affect her job..." but who can really avoid letting an extreme mindset affect their job? It wouldn't have to be something as overt and deliberate as refusing to send an ambulance into a majority-black neighborhood. It could operate on a subconscious level.

edited 7th Jun '13 9:54:25 AM by Karalora

The comments that really bother me are the ones like this:

Most people don't know the name of the person who mugged them in a dark alley either. Take down the information that the person can give you. Don't just ignore the crime because their private lives don't meet your personal standards of people worth giving a fuck about.

Employers are now very aware of the impact that social media can have upon how they are viewed by the public. Given that information shared on social media is both almost permanent and capable of spreading like wildfire, no one is going to take the risk of having themselves be associated with bad PR. This is especially the case for people who are in a position of life-and-death responsibility; they have to be trustworthy and be seen to be trustworthy.

Social media cannot be... well, social media AND your personal diary. If you decide to put information into a giant network accessible by billions of people, including friends, family and coworkers, then you have to take responsibility for your decision. Folk need to get their heads around the idea that Facebook isn't a licence to abandon inhibitions.

edited 7th Jun '13 9:59:39 AM by TheBatPencil

The real issue, I think, is whether or not they would have done anything if a public outcry hadn't occurred. Firing her was really a public relations move more than anything else.

I'm not sure that a FB rant qualifies as indication of clear and life-threatening bias against black people. I've heard other black people say FAR worse than she did about blacks and with much uglier language.

That's the thing that worries me. If I dug up enough dirt, I could find a conversation from anybody that would not reflect well on them.

When my ex-gf pissed me off, I said some shit that couldn't be labelled anything other than misogynistic. If you judged me on the basis of those angry comments alone; then I'd be a misogynist.

I just wonder what kind of road we go down when we start trying people in the Court of Facebook Opinion.

Everyone is a little -ist now and then, but there's a difference between slipping into -ist sometimes and defining yourself as an -ist. To me, the major issue is that her particular -ist just happens to coincide with the majority of her job's 'customers,' in combination with the fact that she has a very stressful, very critical job that requires split second reactions to keep people safe. That is a toxic combination.

I would be less concerned if her -ist wasn't targeting the majority of the people she's supposed to be helping, or if she was in a less important job position. For example, if she was an architect, a computer programmer or a burger flipper, I wouldn't care so much. But for jobs that are about saving lives... for 911 operators, for law enforcement, for government, for military... for things like that, I hold people to higher standards because they have more power over us.

Can't really argue with that logic.

Zero Tolerance often unfortunately harms the victim as much as the perpetrator. Such as the cases of kids getting suspended for trying to protect themselves after the bully threw the first punch.

@Ship: I can say I have unfortunately said awful things when I was young and didn't know what they meant. But not only is the lady well past the age to know better, her attitude is horrifying.

I don't support how they went about this though, I'd rather allow a private citizen to keep her privacy.

If, in the worst case scenario, the woman in question was actually going to intentionally fumble the call for blacks, how would she even know their skin color from just their voice and Caller ID info?

Sure, some parts of towns may be predominantly [minority race], but even in the most segregated ghettos there's going to be white people, and if she does discriminate by address it's going to become obvious pretty quickly with anything more detailed than a cursory glance at statistics (and you bet your ass statistics are tracked, even if they get fudged for reasons of political expedience).

While I personally find her comments reprehensible, I think the kneejerking of firing was too far, given there has been (AFAIK) no evidence that she actually was discriminating against black 911 callers, just hypotheticals about what she might do, as if there were a Precrime division.

edited 7th Jun '13 10:08:05 AM by Nohbody

I couldn't have said it any better.

I don't see anything there that makes it look like she was going to discriminate professionally. She was making frustrating observations on some dumbass 911 callers. She also said some things that, yeah, were really ignorant and racist, but it didn't look like she was going to stop doing her job or anything.

I think I'd be a little frustrated too if someone made a call and didn't know what her boyfriends actual name was.

edited 7th Jun '13 11:03:48 AM by Barkey

Agreed: some of it was a much-needed need to blow steam off (and, when you do that, you often blow your own views out of proportion care of the frustration). She chose the wrong route. <sighs> And, yes: that certainly deserved a slap on the wrist. But, only firing if proof could be found that it was actually impacting her performance at work.

That's the thing, Facebook posts shouldn't be held as a basis for firing someone unless they indicate an actual problem with job performance.

Where are people supposed to vent? At the end of the day, people can and do have their prejudices sometimes, where are they allowed to say that shit?

And if people don't end up getting those prejudices out in a place that they feel is safe then A. they could be tempted to go further underground with such prejudices and resort to more extreme ways of showing them in the end or B. they might never have those prejudices properly put straight - not just get fired because 'prejudice is bad'.