When discussing the nature of at-will employment (which a lot of people don’t understand), I often use the example “You can be legally fired for wearing the color purple” as an example of the lack of legitimate pretext needed to fire someone. In the future, I will have to use orange, instead:
In an interview with the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel, several of the fired workers say they wore the matching colors so they would be identified as a group when heading out for a happy hour event after work. They say the executive who fired them initially accused them of wearing the matching color as a form of protest against management.
Orange is widely considered to be one of the most visible colors to the human eye. Orange vests are worn by most hunters as a safety precaution and by school crossing guards. Most prisoners are required to wear orange jump suits.
The color orange is arguably Florida’s defining color. The self-described “Sunshine State” is widely known for its orange juice exports.
The law offices of Elizabeth R. Wellborn, P.A. offered “no comment” to Sun-Sentinel reporter Doreen Hemlock, but four ex-employees tell the paper they were simply wearing their orange shirts to celebrate “pay day” and the upcoming Friday group happy hour.
Outside The Beltway has a post on the subject. Joyner thought that it might be related to St. Paddy’s day, with orange being the color of the unionists. It was, however, unrelated. More than a couple of people have suggested that a company that would do this is probably not a company one should be excited about working for. One rumor making its way around is that it wasn’t actually a lunch thing, but rather a bunch of employees making fun of an executive’s fake tan. I have no knowledge that this is true, but I am going to pretend that it is. That would make it a little more understandable, I guess, but it is still indicative of a problem.
I have the distinction of having worked for one of the ten worst employers in the nation. I worked the overnight shift. This was a notoriously bad* company to work for and it, as a coworker put it, “breeds contempt.” The overnight shift had a custom of urinating on the side of the building during our nightly round (we worked the server room, but doubled as “security guards.”). Leaving aside the immaturity of urinating on the side of the building, when you have a bunch of white collar employees feeling compelled to go out of their way to do so, you have a problem. And it’s not dried urine on the building when everyone walks in to work in the morning.
The same applies to a law firm where you can get over a dozen employees to wear orange to make fun of somebody there. Given the response, one can assume it was not “all in good fun.” And if this was a light-hearted place where it was taken too far, we should be able to assume a lighter punishment than this.
I broadly support employment-at-will, even if it does lead to circumstances like this on occasion. Forcing a company to get its paperwork in order to be able to fire someone they want to get rid of doesn’t negate the overall power imbalance. It simply turns termination-without-cause into termination-with-cause a couple months later. I don’t actually extend this to various other protections, many of which I do support. At least in part because such laws are more enforceable, because it’s easier to establish a pattern of coming down too hard minorities, women, gays, the disabled or whatnot than it is to establish a pattern of firing people who wear the color orange or, for whatever reason, the employer doesn’t want to keep around.
* – Upon starting, they gave you five logoed button shirts. You could wear these, or you could wear a suit and tie. They were actually pretty nice shirts. Whenever I am back home, I make a point of wearing one of these shirts when I am about town. Very frequently, a stranger will recognize the shirt and strike up a conversation. “When did you serve?” “2003-04.” “Did they still have that policy about posting the names of the people who used the bathroom too frequently?” “No, they got rid of that a couple weeks before. They did still monitor the frequency and durations of the break.” And from there I would go into the story about how, when my roommate quit, I was personally visited by a higher-up in the company who told me that I needed to find a new roommate.
Hertz?
It’s a software/IT company that almost nobody has heard. Except for IT people back home, who know of them because they’re always hiring because they cycle through employees so quickly. They are a business-to-business company (like, say, a company that writes the software to keep track of Hertz’s vehicle fleet, that sort of thing), so nobody except businesses in particular industry does business with them.
I realize I was a bit misleading with the word “notoriously” when I am talking about a company few are familiar with. I meant notorious within the city and industry. If you work in IT in city X, you have likely either worked for them or know someone who has (two ex-roommates worked for them, one applied but failed the personality profiling test, and a couple other friends worked for them.) The first time I ever heard of them, it was because they were being sued by the EEOC for refusing to hire anybody with a disability and anybody over 35.
A personality profiling test for a software company? I’m guessing you fail if you have one.
Before they will even talk to you*, you go into this giant auditorium and take two tests, one for personality profiling and another that’s essentially an IQ test. Do well enough on that, you will go through their three steps of interviews.
We figure the purpose of the personality test is to keep out those who question authority.
Will,
doubtful. the point of the personality test is probably to find those who will DO something about stupid authority figures. stuff that would be damaging to the company.
“What do you mean you made them go bankrupt by giving them Good Advice?”
“It wasn’t my fault they took it!”
The effect was to keep out people that (a) questioned authority and (b) didn’t know enough or were unable to conceal it while taking the test. I went in knowing what the “correct” answers were. The friend who flunked the test knew what they were looking for, too, he just couldn’t pretend otherwise for the sake of the test.