A close acquaintance of mine is a right-wing ideologue. A short while ago after sometime between jobs
he landed a plum position in a small company, where his jack-of-all-trades
skills paid off. He was recognized for
his efforts and after about a year was given a nice title and placed on their
board of directors. “Joe” was not only a
jack-of-all-trades at work, he was also a jack-of-all-trades on social
media. No social media was immune from
his often hate-filled rhetoric. It was fairly
frequent that his entire email list would receive an almost overtly racist
cartoon regarding the POTUS. Some emails
and FB posts were more subtle. Mostly
not too subtle. One day “Joe” was,
without notice, let go of his job.
Company struggling in the economic climate? No, the company was doing
fine. “Joe” said they did not tell him
why he was let go and had no idea. Gosh,
he was on their board and was a critical member of the organization. Recently “Joe” got a new position at another
company after a rather desperate, prayer-filled search.
His new job is going well and of course he is happy to be working again.
“Joe” no longer streams his hate-speech across the internet. I’d like to think that he has had a change of
heart. That seems unlikely. More to the point it would seem he’s finally
put 2 + 2 together. While he is
certainly entitled to his opinion, the company does not have to hold that
opinion and if he represents the company, he represents the company too when he
is “off the clock”. Unfair? Perhaps.
“Joe” and the rest of us represent our companies around the clock. When you meet someone outside of work, how
quickly does the conversation get to “what do you do”? The internet is littered
with notorious stories of people who send controversial tweets, emails and posts. These famous folks make the news so the “Joe’s”
of the world need to not re-invent the wheel on how you represent yourself (and
your company).
