Sticker Shock
Guess what. Not supporting the president can get you fired from your job. Just ask the woman who got fired for having a Kerry sticker on her car.
“We were going back to work from break, and my manager told me that Phil said to remove the sticker off my car or I was fired,” she said. “I told him that Phil couldn’t tell me who to vote for. He said, ‘Go tell him.’ ”
She went to Gaddis’ office, knocked on the door and entered on his orders.
“Phil and another man who works there were there,” she said. “I asked him if he said to remove the sticker and he said, ‘Yes, I did.’ I told him he couldn’t tell me who to vote for. When I told him that, he told me, ‘I own this place.’ I told him he still couldn’t tell me who to vote for.”
Gobbell said Gaddis told her to “get out of here.”
“I asked him if I was fired and he told me he was thinking about it,” she said. “I said, ‘Well, am I fired?’ He hollered and said, ‘Get out of here and shut the door.’ ”
She said her manager was standing in another room and she asked him if that meant for her to go back to work or go home. The manager told her to go back to work, but he came back a few minutes later and said, ” ‘I reckon you’re fired. You could either work for him or John Kerry,’ ” Gobbell said.
Welcome to W’s America, folks. Compassionate conservatism at its best. One wonders if this qualifies as “class warfare.”
The folks over at AMERICAblog are taking up a collection for Gobbell.
I can’t help wondering, is a firing like this legal? Can people actually be legally fired because of which presidential candidate they support, or for their political leanings? If there are any lawyers out there, help me out here.
September 14th, 2004 at 1:30 pm
Seems so unreal! What’s up with this country of ours?
September 14th, 2004 at 2:26 pm
I can’t help wondering, is a firing like this legal? Can people actually be legally fired because of which presidential candidate they support, or for their political leanings?
Yep. In most states, the rule to follow is that you can be fired for any reason or for no reason, so long as it’s not a “bad” reason. (”Bad” in this sense means a reason that violates a statute like a civil rights law or the ADA.) That’s the essence of the concept of “at-will employment”. You can be fired for who you support for President, which TV shows you like, what model car you drive, or because you like Haagen Daz. Creepy? Yes. Legal? Absolutely.
September 14th, 2004 at 2:58 pm
Woman Fired for Kerry Bumper Sticker
([Update 14:57]:Terrance informs us that the folks over at AMERICAblog are taking up a collection for Gobbell) While looking around through the trackbacks and comments I got last night, I found a link on XtraRant to an article in the…