Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, the broader context of that email chain is a broad unloading of a 'greatest hits' of a decade of grievances against SparkFun (the meme site mentioned was made in 2017, by an employee who no longer works there). I quoted the lines that seemed to most obviously tip that particular email exchange beyond a measured harassment report (as originally implied), crossing the line into what could be reasonably considered…
Not to split hairs here but it doesn’t look like he said it was a measured harassment report. Having worked customer service and HR, it’s somewhat common for people reporting harassment to be irate or even downright rude, especially when they feel that they’re being ignored. The idea that calling someone a jerk is grounds for a company to ignore a serious complaint is, paradoxically, what some people describe as thei…
If splitting hairs, he originally framed the response as 'kill the messenger', implying there was no other reason for them be offended by it, misleading at least.
> Anyway I don’t know what’s going on here but “Sparkfun has ceased its business relationship with Adafruit because a guy called us jerks in a complaint about our CEO” would be hilarious
I agree, in isolation- it seems reasonable to end a business relationship with any rude or hostile partner regardless, but hiding such a decision behind a CoC rationale just for being called jerks would indeed border on 'hilarious'.
In this case, the claim is that the note was also sent to the ex-employee's partner's current employer, which enters less-hilarious territory towards borderline harassment, not a private HR complaint but public defamation.
Taken as one instance of a broader, ongoing pattern of targeted harassment of several individuals, the combined set of public complaints make the CoC reference not at all amusing.