True Lies: Firing People For Their Political Beliefs

There is another kerfuffle. This kerfuffle has led to various people posting on social media about a certain person who had an unfortunate encounter with a bullet and is now dead. Various other people have taken exception to these postings and have contacted the employers of the first group of people in order to get them fired.

Let me begin by saying that I don’t think the dead guy should have been deaded. As annoying as I think he was, if we’re going to start murdering people for being annoying then I am in a lot of trouble.

Controversial opinion: Murdering people is bad.

However I recognize that there are a wide range of views about the dead guy and I have zero interest in policing any of them.

I have been very poor at firing people for their political beliefs. I have fired them because they were bad at their jobs or because they were good at their jobs but the company needed to save money. In return, I have been fired to save my employer money or because my boss and I had blazing rows. But hiring people is hard and managing people is hard and firing people is, also, hard.

In a former role, I managed a woman called Rita. Rita was a South African with a temper. Her defining moment happened at a departmental Christmas BBQ. There we were, eating our grilled meats, sipping our beers, and secret santaing our Secret Santa. We had all bought gifts of under $10 for each other but at the last minute, it was decided that the event should shift to Dirty Santa - where gifts can be “stolen” by later participants. Everyone said that it sounded like fun.

Everyone except Rita. Rita was outraged. Such shenanigans made a mockery of Christmas and gift-giving as far she was concerned. She hurled her gift to the ground and stormed off. Apparently unconcealed rage is the True Spirit of Christmas. There was an awkward pause. And then the festivities continued. While Rita stewed somewhere, like a pudding in custard. I later spoke to her about her behaviour but she was unrepentant. It was everyone else who had been having fun in the wrong way.

So when she told me that Nelson Mandela should have been shot, it didn’t really come as a surprise. As far as Rita was concerned, Mandela was a terrorist who deserved the death penalty. And it was true, before turning to peace, he had been a terrorist.

Controversial opinion: I do not think that Nelson Mandela should have been executed by the South African state.

As much as I vehemently disagreed with Rita, she was quite good at her job. And she had not sought to hurt or abuse another team member. And the paperwork would have been a total ball ache. So I let that one slide. Mostly. I did tell her that my grandfather strongly believed that Gandhi should have been shot by the British Empire. Which she thought was an outrageous thing to believe. But I didn’t want to have an argument when there were so many work-related things for us to argue about instead.

Where do people find the energy?