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Emergency Dispatcher Fired For Facebook Drug Joke
kaptink writes "Dana Kuchler, a 21-year veteran of the West Allis Dispatch Department, was fired from her job for making jokes on her Facebook page about taking drugs. She appealed to an arbitrator, claiming the Facebook post was a joke, pointing out she had written 'ha' in it, and noting that urine and hair samples tested negative for drugs. The arbitrator said she should be entitled to go back to work after a 30-day suspension, but the City of West Allis complained that was not appropriate. Is posting bad jokes on Facebook a justifiable reason to give someone the boot?"
Probably not, but by the time it's sorted she'll be bankrupt
-------
1. Enjoy your job
2. Make lots of money
3. Work within the law
Choose any two.
Maybe they had other reasons, but needed an excuse to lay her off?
- Don't do what I do, it's probably not healthy nor safe. -
I'd say no. It is kind of disappointing that our off hour lives are subject to such scrutiny. The employees sense of humor or lack thereof shouldn't get them canned. They already demonstrated they were not in fact using drugs (though, even if they were, unless it interfered with their ability to perform their duty at work, who cares?). Seems like a simple misunderstanding and they should be allowed to return to work and get on with their life.
Seriously I understand from a business point the reason. But that doesn't make it right.
Kinda along the lines of no bathroom breaks, mandatory overtime without compensation, and your everyday harassment from bosses.
It always seems like when a company goes too far to try to limit negative publicity all they get is a mountain of bad press.
Sounds like the excuse to fire someone whom they could replace with someone a lot cheaper/less benefits due to years of service....
We were all warned a long time ago that MS products sucked, remember the Magic 8 Ball said, "Outlook not so good"
Yes, private in the same sense as if you were to decide to go to a bar and have a few drinks with your friends while not working it would still be a "private" event in the sense that her employer would have little grounds for firing you even using the "but anyone could see him/her in the bar and we don't condone binge drinking here! We have to protect our corporate image!" argument. Once you're off the clock it is your private time to do with as you please (unless you're getting paid to be on call).
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
You know, we wouldn't even have this problem if we didn't try to prohibit Americans from so many things...
GCS/MU/P d- s:- a-- C++++$ UL++ P+ L++ E+ W++ N o K- w--- O M+ V- PS+++ PE Y+ PGP t+ 5- X R++ tv+ b++ DI++ D++ G+ e++ h-
With Facebook's constant and behind-the-back changes to make more and more things public by default, it'll be a question of time until somebody gets fired because they posted something for their friends (not including anybody from work), yet people (incl. employment-related) they had never intended to see the message did see it and used it against the poster.
Personally I hate the fact, that I have to keep screening my privacy settings just in case they fucked around with something again and changed it to "Everybody".
As long as your physical performance on the job isn't affected, your employer should have no right to use what you do outside of work hours against you, unless they're paying you to be on-call (and even then, there should be limits).
End of story.
I've calculated my velocity with such exquisite precision that I have no idea where I am.
Think before you post online, whichever site or mailing list. Too many people post without thinking.
Seriously, should I have to do this ? And when I make a joke in public to one of my friends should I first glance over my shoulder to see if there's some HR loon or middle manager stalking me who could use a joke as an excuse to fire me ? That's not the kind of society I want to live in. (It's also in fact NOT the society I live in because luckily I happen to live in a country with decent social protections and unions.) This is the sort of thing we used reproach the USSR for : peoples lives being destroyed because they get reported for saying the "wrong things" without recourse.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
In firing Kuchler, the West Allis Police Chief wrote that Kuchler's Facebook posting "destroyed the city's trust and confidence in (her) ability and integrity" as a dispatcher and was "an embarrassment to the city."
If being an embarrassment to the city by cracking jokes can get you fired, we should give politicians the death sentence for embarrassing the nation!
Well, on the plus side, there's no need to feel bad for her. She's likely to file--and win--a substantial lawsuit against the city for wrongful termination which will not only net her her job back (if she wants it) but also her pension and a decent chunk of change for her troubles.
Such is the power of firing people for no reason and ignoring an arbiter who told you that you did so.
The real answer is to pry the HR drones away from Facebook and make them get back to work, thus making this entirely a non-issue.
That's not likely to happen, so kids it's time to learn the lesson the net taught everyone else long before there was a world wide web - don't use your real name if you want to write anything that may offend the most easily offended person you can think of.
Don't use the goddamned Facebook.
What's so hard about it?
Does that mean a Coca-Cola employee could be fired because they always buy lunch at Taco Bell and joke about hating the taste of Diet Coke? Does that mean I could be fired from the hotel where I work because I stayed at a Hilton and it was reported that I said Hiltons are much nicer? What if I posted these on a Myspace page? A twitter page? In a privately-visible Facebook entry? Where is the line drawn? Are my first-amendment rights applicable?
On the one hand, they tried to remove an employee in a critical job who had been linked - via a Facebook comment - to drugs. On the other hand, they tried to remove an experienced employee working in a critical job who had submitted to and passed their drug tests. Who would they replace her with? A less experienced dispatcher who talks about drug addiction in bars and at home but not on Facebook?
What makes you think she is anonymous or assumed that it will not be read by her employer? Her defense is that it is an obvious joke, and that she is not really a drug addict. We don't know the rest of the conversation, may be what she said was funny in the context it was said too.
Like others pointed out, this is probably just an excuse to fire her. The real reason could be something else.
I'm much more funny, interesting and insightful than the moderators think
Arbitration in the US is binding.
Unless it's non-binding arbitration. The TFA only says that the woman "appealed to an arbitrator."
People joke on the street about taking drugs all the time. I couldn't imagine batting an eye if I heard that walking by a group of strangers.
Some people see the internet as a big newspaper, with all of the authority, authenticity, and formality that entails. Something showing up on the internet is documented in a library permanently. Anyone looking up anything related to that person will inevitably come across that thing, tie that thing back to their employer. The West Allis police department would forever be associated with hiring a drug-using loony online.
Of course, that's not the case at all (at least, not until they made it newsworthy). The internet is dirtier, louder, and with a lot more noise. Nobody outside of that particular Emergency Dispatcher's family and friends were ever likely to see that post. The sheer volume of noise around the department, and even that particular dispatcher, made that possibility basically zero. And anyone digging that deeply would find far more controversial revelations about the city. This is, after all, the city that gave us both Liberace and Jeffery Dahmer.
It's like when photographs of schoolteachers drinking at weddings appear on the internet. Or when someone follows a twitter feed of a controversial gay rights advocate. People have to have lives outside of their jobs. They have to make controversial art, put up silly christmas displays, and protest government policies they disagree with. This all will get photographed or filmed by someone, and somehow it will go up on Flickr or YouTube. Some people in our society are still calibrated on the older scale, and can't deal with the idea that things which are OK to do in private frequently finds its way online.
This is especially significant when there are real problems out there. A one-sentence obvious joke about drug use is a major public relations nightmare? The high school students in my area sneak into bathrooms to shoot up, and one of their teachers was laid off for sleeping with them. We have a mugger prowling the area, along with a ton of dealers. And this is in a relatively safe city. Making a joke about doing drugs on Facebook isn't even a blip. Have they heard anything that is said in the fire department's locker rooms?
A simple "that's not cool, please take that down" would have resulted in the content being gone from the internet forever, and an employee a bit better educated about what the city is comfortable with. Also, it would have sidestepped this lawsuit. Destroying a career for it, though, is extreme. The only other alternative is to strive as hard as you can to keep any personally identifiable information or photographs off of the internet (how long before ip reverse lookup tables are trivial?), and down that road lies madness.
The ______ Agenda
I deleted my account over a year ago.
And it's been better ever since.
Seriously, if you don't know how to use facebook properly you're better off without it. It's a useful toy but it's not the answer to all the worlds problems - i'm tired of hearing from people who thought it was and then get all upset when they find it isn't.
I don't think so
The question is not about anonymity or "safety" it's about what you are "allowed" to say to your friends in your free time.
I don't see the fired woman complaining about anonymity. You're treading out a position on FB privacy issues (which I agree with) at an irrelevant time.
"The arbitrator said she should be entitled to go back to work after a 30-day suspension, but the City of West Allis complained that was not appropriate."
So the city sets up a kangaroo court, is displeased with the results and declares it moot? Generally those contracts where you agree to settle things by arbitration are set up so the big can crush the little with a minimum of effort.
What was the purpose of arbitration if "the city" can simply say it is displeased with the result. I like how the TFA makes it sound like this is a talking city.
Is posting bad jokes on Facebook a justifiable reason to give someone the boot?"
All things being equal, the answer is no.
Once you consider the context, it depends. If my jokes involve insulting the company I work for, my managers or co-workers, then yes. Obviously, that was not the case with this person, but it's important to answer this question, given slashdotters' penchant for asking what-would-jeebuz-do open ended questions without context.
In this particular case, look at it like this: One has to be a real idiot to post jokes like that when on that of job... specially after having multiple warnings and write-offs at work. The dispatch department shouldn't have the power to fire her off like that, but it can,and this woman put herself in that situation... after multiple warnings and write-offs, unrelated nonetheless, but she should have known the department was looking for a way to get rid of her.
It's as if I were to work for the Secret Service or the NSA, with multiple warnings and write-offs all the while making jokes or half-assed statements about flying a plane on a building. We don't need to be computer/privacy-savy to exercise rudimentary common sense.
Companies and orgs should not have the power to fire people for stupid jokes plastered on their facebooks... but it happens. If you are that stupid to fall for that, shame on the company for abusing its power, and shame on you for being a moron without an ounce of common sense. I know, I know, freedom of speech and all that, but do you really want to exercise your right to be a clueless moron on a job like that, after multiple warnings and write-offs, without giving it any thought, just because?
Common sense and prudence. They can be useful.
The city was probably just trying to protect itself from lawsuits. Think about it, Say the dispatcher screws up one day and sends police / fire to the wrong address, or is slow to respond. Then the city gets sued for having a druggie for a dispatcher with her facebook post as evidence. I hate it but that is the kind of society we live in now days.
News is never impartial, and anyone who tells you that it is is trying to sell you their take on it. But even partial news can still be factual. Are you arguing with the facts? On what basis?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
The simple rule is to never post anything online that you wouldn't mind your worst enemy getting their hands on and using against you.
Well it would be the end of it, except the city has taken the binding arbitration ruling to court to have it thrown out. What it boils down to in the end is one of two things:
1) Does the city feel it's worthhile to fire her and either:
a) pay out a settlement from the resulting wrongful discharge, et al lawsuit,
b) are convinced she won't find some hired gun foaming at the mouth to make mega-bucks suing a retarded local government;
OR
2) Does the city deluded think they can win a wrongful discharge suit, even after ignoring (in an act of civil contempt) and failing to obey the legally binding arbitration which specifically said they can't fire her for this stupid joke to her friends or the public ( I don't know what her setting was on this FB stupidity)?
In any event for Dana we have
3) Profit!!!!
Why settle for a measly pension when you can squeeze the blood out of the city and take everyone's pension!?