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Interns Get Fired En Masse After Protesting Dress Code at Work

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Re: Interns Get Fired En Masse After Protesting Dress Code at Work

#51

Post by masklinn »

GrumpyYoungMan wrote: post #47
masklinn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think they shouldn't have complained about something that everyone was following > they weren’t going to complain. That is, “until I noticed one of the workers always wore flat shoes that were made from a fabric other than leather, or running shoes, even though both of these things were contrary to the dress code.” The interns were told that was a medical exemption… after they were mass-fired, but not when they i…

>The interns were told that was a medical exemption… after they were mass-fired, but not when they initially inquired about the possibility of relaxed dress code: People do have a right to privacy. The person with a medical issue may have asked that details not be disclosed to his/her co-workers. The questionable part of this story might not be that the interns were terminated but that the existence of the medical is…

> People do have a right to privacy.

Which management obviously didn't care about since they ended up telling the interns about it (apparently as a shaming tool since they specifically mentioned service).

> The person with a medical issue may have asked that the nature of the issue not be disclosed to his/her co-workers.

Which they did not have to at any point, management could just have answered the initial question with "they have a medical exemption".

Re: Interns Get Fired En Masse After Protesting Dress Code at Work

#53

Post by belorn »

cddotdotslash wrote: post #24
anu7df wrote: post #14

Is there possibly more to this story? As it stands it looks like the interns made a polite request and fired for it. I understand the "intern is a guest" argument, but he/she is also a future employee playing that part and would like to be treated as such. If any polite request is countered by firing I can't imagine that will be a good place to work.

A polite request is asking their respective managers about the dress code and whether it can be relaxed. Creating a petition, circling it among the entire intern group, and essentially demanding change at a place that was generous enough to hire them for a learning experience is not a polite request. I interned at four separate companies when I was younger. I would have never even conceived the idea of doing somethin…

If we are going to throw out blame, what about the generation that feel entitled to treat interns like dirts, just because they can? If a company has a rule which does not benefit the company and is only there to humiliate interns, what is the moral argument for it?

Re: Interns Get Fired En Masse After Protesting Dress Code at Work

#54

Post by StavrosK »

masklinn wrote: post #39
StavrosK wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the other employee had a health issue that prevented them from wearing dress shoes, and management didn't want to share that private information? It definitely sounds like management would prefer to force the lone employee to follow dress code than to allow everyone else to break it.

> Maybe the other employee had a health issue They did, they had lost a leg, which the interns didn't know beforehand. > management didn't want to share that private information? Except they shared that information… after firing all the interns: > We were told to hand in our ID badges and to gather our things and leave the property ASAP. […] just before the meeting ended, one of the managers told us that the worker w…

Ah, right, I didn't read this article (I read the one that was on the front page again earlier today).

I think the interns were excessive in making a petition just for changing the dress code, because that can be interpreted as a hostile move, and the company was excessive in firing them, because that's tyrannical and destroys morale.

Pretty much everyone involved here was being a dick.

Re: Interns Get Fired En Masse After Protesting Dress Code at Work

#55

Post by emn13 »

cddotdotslash wrote: post #24
anu7df wrote: post #14

Is there possibly more to this story? As it stands it looks like the interns made a polite request and fired for it. I understand the "intern is a guest" argument, but he/she is also a future employee playing that part and would like to be treated as such. If any polite request is countered by firing I can't imagine that will be a good place to work.

A polite request is asking their respective managers about the dress code and whether it can be relaxed. Creating a petition, circling it among the entire intern group, and essentially demanding change at a place that was generous enough to hire them for a learning experience is not a polite request. I interned at four separate companies when I was younger. I would have never even conceived the idea of doing somethin…

Requiring people to adhere to a negotiation strategy that essentially means begging for goodwill doesn't sound reasonable to me. The power disparity between an individual and a large company is huge; so if you really want to effect change, you're going to need to address that - for example by banding together.

I don't think it's healthy for any social group (not just companies) to be as inflexible as today's companies have grown. A bit of friction and disagreement is a low price to pay for adaptability.

And of course, this kind of inflexibility is symptomatic of entrenched power imbalance which leads to wealth inequality which causes its own host of societal problems. To be clear, I don't think correlation is causation here: the company isn't at fault for creating wealth inequality, but I do worry that we're busy ignoring warning signals that might bite us all in the a if we're not careful.

Re: Interns Get Fired En Masse After Protesting Dress Code at Work

#56

Post by Spooky23 »

anu7df wrote: post #14

Is there possibly more to this story? As it stands it looks like the interns made a polite request and fired for it. I understand the "intern is a guest" argument, but he/she is also a future employee playing that part and would like to be treated as such. If any polite request is countered by firing I can't imagine that will be a good place to work.

The formalized collective action in the form petition was the problem. That's a bat-signal.

Given the current legal and regulatory environment, any good corporate counsel or HR person sees that as a step towards organization, and will stamp it out.

Re: Interns Get Fired En Masse After Protesting Dress Code at Work

#57

Post by SFJulie »

timonovici wrote: post #27
jessriedel wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Punishment completely aside, as an employer I'd simply want nothing to do with these intern in the future. Protesting something like this is a good signal of their attitude/perspective.

So, you would just fire people because they wanted to wear more comfortable shoes, and they sent a letter about it? There are places where shoes/clothing really matters, like a mechanics shop (with their overalls), a construction site (the steel reinforcement of the tip of the shoe), a woodworking shop, where baggy clothing could lead to injury - but that's definitely not the case in the article. These control freaks…

As said in the comments above they where fired because they did naïvely what unions are doing : mutualizing workers' claims to heir hierarchy and make a front.

The article take the thesis of the "youth are worse than before" like Socrates was saying (so old story)

The real part of the story is due to experience, the older you are the more likely you are to be a manager or a boss.

Hence elder generations will always blame new generations for not knowing their place in this system.

And younger person will fall for the trick like their elder, because that what bullying is for: engraving a behavior as a collective norm.

Re: Interns Get Fired En Masse After Protesting Dress Code at Work

#58

Post by rmah »

masklinn wrote: post #12
dingo_bat wrote: post #2

I think they shouldn't have complained about something that everyone was following, and a formal code is not very uncommon. I also think that firing everyone point blank just because they wrote a letter is an extreme overreaction. They could have been lectured on professional behavior instead and I'm sure most of them would have understood.

> I think they shouldn't have complained about something that everyone was following > they weren’t going to complain. That is, “until I noticed one of the workers always wore flat shoes that were made from a fabric other than leather, or running shoes, even though both of these things were contrary to the dress code.” The interns were told that was a medical exemption… after they were mass-fired, but not when they i…

"I don't understand how sending queries/proposals up the chain is unprofessional behavior. Ignoring the dress code and coming in not following it would be unprofessional behavior."

I also think that the companies reaction may have been a bit extreme. That said, I can sort of understand their thinking.

1) the interns are thinking about their dress more than their assignments. Which shows questionable prioritization.

2) they think their ideas of what is acceptable or unacceptable should even be considered. Which shows a lack of understanding of their place in the pecking order (lowest of the low).

3) related to #1, THIS is one of the first they bring to the attention of management? really? Which shows an inability understand that first you have to build respect and trust before even asking for these sort of changes.

4) the fact that they organized to ask together smacks of making demands (even if not literally stated as such). This was not simply a query/proposal up the chain. At least it doesn't seem so to me.

Re: Interns Get Fired En Masse After Protesting Dress Code at Work

#59

Post by throwanem »

olau wrote: post #46
throwanem wrote: post #31

I've never understood the mindset in which something as trivial as what you wear to work actually seems like a big deal.

Can't remember if it's Seven Day Weekend or Peopleware were they talk about the furniture police. I don't understand it either. I think some people find it threatening that the employees are actually human, silly as it sounds.

Sorry, I think you've got the wrong end. What confuses me is that being expected to dress like a grownup is something a lot of people apparently find galling enough to get up in arms about.

Re: Interns Get Fired En Masse After Protesting Dress Code at Work

#60

Post by throwanem »

SFJulie wrote: post #38

Hum Short sleeves and shorts have a positive impact on ecology and money savings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cool_Biz_campaign I mean concerned citizens are hammered between increasingly enforced orders of being a good citizens (that don't pollute or be honest), while companies may make them do stuff that makes them bad citizens (pollution or tax frauds). And the more a citizen does not comply with either one or t…

> Short sleeves and shorts have a positive impact on ecology and money savings

Yeah - short sleeves, short pants, and a mandated indoor temperature over eighty degrees Fahrenheit. Talk about enforced good citizenship!

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