Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

omaha.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

391–400 of 548 posts

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#391

Post by nasredin »

forapurpose wrote: post #355
chrischen wrote: post #38

"Dozens of social media accounts were tweeting angry things, including many death threats, at both Roy and Marriott. This seems especially odd considering Twitter itself is officially banned in China, and thus can be accessed only by residents breaking the law or by bot accounts." Not sure why they assume that "dozens of social media accounts" of pro-China supporters is not possible. They're making some weird assumpt…

> it's seen as similar to the US/Hawaii situation I was wondering how someone would find a way, even in this discussion, to apply 'the U.S. does it too' comment. Personally, after reading HN for awhile I can hardly distinguish between the U.S. and China.

It's called "whataboutism".

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#392

Post by coupdetaco »

banned1 wrote: post #343
FranzFerdiNaN wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No they don't. If they need it their business is terrible and should not exist. I live in the Netherlands and our restaurants do just fine without being allowed to fire at will and without the need for tips to give employees a decent wage. It's called sane labor laws.

It’s a different world. The US is a free country. You are free to work wherever they accept you. A job is not a right: you cannot demand anything that someone else must provide you. And people for the most part are free to start a business pretty much whether it should exist or not regardless of anybody else’s opinions.

There is a right to work under the responsibility to protect. Industry structure that produces a permanent underclass is a form of violence, and class warfare.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#393

Post by kitd »

corobo wrote: post #21

The meat of the story is that Omaha man worked for Marriott hotels on customer support. Their support system allows their agents to like tweets. The man appears to have inadvertently clicked like on a tweet while dealing with a large influx of support messages (due to a promo going on) thanking Marriott for listing Tibet as its own country which was a huge no-no due to Mariott's presence in China. Execs fire him as a…

> Another question does occur - if it's such a big deal for them, why is/was Tibet listed as its own country in their system that prompted the liked tweet in the first place?

Even worse is that the listing came from a 3rd party survey firm. The employee is paying the price for what was ultimately them fouling up.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#394

Post by narag »

Tehnix wrote: post #367
darawk wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's because they are taking a risk. If you make it harder to fire people, companies simply won't hire them in the first place. The harder it is to fire someone, the more dangerous it is to hire them . The more cautious employers will be about hiring in the first place. This is a real problem in countries that have strict firing laws.

>simply won't hire them in the first place Except that is simply not true, and very easily proven false simply by showing countries with actual employee protection and unions like e.g. Denmark.

The effect of workforce excesive protection is not the same on individual companies as on a country as a whole.

Individual companies won't hire if some law hits them specifically, the same as if they're cash strapped, lost a big customer or some raw materials they need raise their price.

For a country it's loss of competitiveness and more long term. The questions are more like: can we as a country afford this law? is individual suffering worth the wealth create?

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#395

Post by fleitz »

darawk wrote: post #359
stephen_g wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s difficult to compare though, because of other factors. I believe the main one between countries like France and Italy and Germany is actually the Euro currency. It’s generally considered to be overvalued compared to France and Italy’s economies and undervalued compared to Germany’s. This makes Germany’s exports extremely competitive (at the expense of costlier imports) which has spurred on their ability to build…

You have the causality reversed. All of the things you enumerated are caused by the relative economic strengths of those economies. Those relative economic strengths are themselves caused by (in large part) by their regulatory regimes, particularly with respect to things like hiring and firing.

Exactly, France and Italy's systems are massively inefficient.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#396

Post by rory096 »

andrepd wrote: post #213
JPKab wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets abused for sure, but more often, businesses get to fire bad employees, and this means they are more likely to give some people a chance who wouldn't get one otherwise. Hiring in certain countries is very risky, because it is so costly to fire a bad employee.

More often, you assert. But have you got any evidence to say so?

http://www.nber.org/papers/w7557

http://www.nber.org/chapters/c10070.pdf

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#397

Post by nasredin »

Stanleyc23 wrote: post #36
zeth___ wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Someone with a twitter account should tweet this at Donald Trump. That will be a real black mirror episode.

the pathos of trump was basically covered in that episode with Waldo that blue bear. fun fact: it predates trump's presidential run by several years.

Fun trivia:

Charlie Brooker talks himself of predicting a Trump-like person becoming president and that Black Mirror "Waldo" episode.

Don't recall the source.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#398

Post by golemiprague »

Asooka wrote: post #371
jpttsn wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thought experiment: a Russian multinational, Gazprom maybe, likes a campaign tweet for “Free Alaska.” How does it come across in America?

President Trump tweets "my big red shiny button bigger than Gazprom CEO's shiny bald head!", a thousand verified twitter accounts blast him for bad international relations. Across the American web many different opinions are raised, debated, trolled, and flamewars rage for a couple of days. Someone posts an image edit of President Trump swinging his tiny hands at a caricature of Putin. There are cats. Nobody at Gazpr…

So far the only person who has some balls to stand against China was Trump. Obama was grovelling to Chinese and Muslim brothers, he was a wimp and they treated him like a wimp. People in the west can lough as much as they want at Trump but he gets respect in the middle east and in Asia.

Re: Omaha man ‘liked’ a tweet, then lost his job

#399

Post by nasredin »

anonforthis323 wrote: post #302
toss1 wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tho they can't solve it single-handedly, they can refuse to be part of the problem by kowtowing to the Chinese Communist Party. And in case it isn't clear: the only proper attitude to this kind of bullying from the likes of dictatorial regimes is Eff 'em. China are only trying to bully everyone into helping propagate a lie. The fact is that they invaded the country of Tibet in living memory and it's leader still live…

Well bullies recognize bullies. They even like to hang out with other bullies. Big businesses didn't get to their position by being nice. They bullied their way to the top. That's why I'm guessing that Marriott actually views China's reactions as reasonable. But I do agree that China's handling of the Tibet situation is poor. They should take a look at how America was able to pacify the natives. Set aside some land f…

>>That's why I'm guessing that Marriott actually views China's reactions as reasonable.

I managed to ignore your posts in this thread, but unfortunately read the above.

Authoritarians always have at least some support from the people and "useful idiots" and the corrupt from abroad.

Post reply on HN