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

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

#121
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…

Yea it's weird I feel like liking the tweet should pale in comparison to whoever listed Tibet as its own country. Seems like the mistake was listing tibet as a country on the survey and they fired a guy just because he put attention to it by liking a tweet (and was thus used as a sacrifice). If I were China, I'd probably demand the firing of someone more consequential than a random minimum wage worker who had little…

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

#122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there another country that has "at will" employment to the extent that the US does?

Pretty much all of them except a few European nations.

>Pretty much all of them except a few European nations.

Where on earth did you get that idea?

There are no affluent western nation besides the United States with "At Will" employment except perhaps Israel (I was unable to confirm).

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

#123
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…

The real story is he has no employment rights because he's in America and he's "at will." They can dismiss him because they don't like his lunch selection that day and he has no rights. That's at will employment. This type of situation plays out all over the country everyday.

It sucks. I'm in a state with At-Will employment - it affects those with very expendable jobs. I've had plenty of friends get fired from restaurant jobs just for (legitimately) calling in sick.

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

#124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there another country that has "at will" employment to the extent that the US does?

Pretty much all of them except a few European nations.

The law and details varies by province/territory in Canada, but in every single one of them you are due form of notice/pay in lieu of notice. I.e. they have to pay you for X weeks after they tell you they are firing you, they might require you keep working for those X weeks.

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

#125
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…

It sounds like Marriott wanted to be in a position to say someone had been fired, and he was offered up.

Either way, pretty shitty on Marriott's part.

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

#127

"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…

> They're making some weird assumption that only people within China could possibly support the Chinese government on the issue.

That's not how I read it. I read it saying it's odd that a platform banned as bad by a government is so readily used by those who support the government. I won't even address the end of your post in detail because it's unrelated to governments punishing businesses for liked tweets.

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

#128

If Marriott were really serious, they should have fired the survey writer instead. They again, maybe that person was fired too. But as to appeasing China, well... I'm not sympathetic.

You’re putting an awful lot of faith in the amount of work executives will do. Not to disparage all C-level executives. But I’m not surprised at all that “China is mad at this tweet...Fire the person on the other end of it.” Is as far as they were willing to dig. They usually fix symptoms, not problems.

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

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't an example of anyone having a say in how the government is run. Any kind of extra-legal and arbitrary "making an example" of a company domestically would be disastrous to confidence in the market. The better implementation of your objective would be to create a policy (enshrined in rules) first, then go after anyone who violates it.

>Any kind of extra-legal and arbitrary "making an example" of a company domestically would be disastrous to confidence in the market. The market is in place to serve the country, not the other way around. Corporate charters are given by government and can be revoked. Colluding with a foreign country that we have a strained relationship with should be grounds for at least looking at the company much more closely.

It's unfortunate that countries do increasingly exist to serve markets. In my opinion that's a real inversion, although subtle, that's been taking place.

Which leads us to a bought political system, at the moment at least.

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