Reader Stan sends the story of a group of support staff at a Florida law firm who were fired en masse because they wore orange shirts to work on Friday for a happy hour celebration:
Four workers tell the story this way: For the past few months, some employees have worn orange shirts on pay-day Fridays so they’d look like a group when they went out for happy hour.
This Friday, 14 workers wearing orange shirts were called into a conference room, where an executive said he understood there was a protest involving orange, the employees were wearing orange, and they all were fired.
Florida is an “employment at will” state, meaning you have the right to be fired for any cause, as long as it’s not for an illegal cause, and we all know that stupidity is legal.
jeffreyw
Orange Liberation Front! Free the oranges!
cathyx
Then any excuse can work for firing, maybe next week it will be anyone who says the word ‘the’ 2 or more times in one sentence.
Soonergrunt
From the firm’s website:
They represent banks in real estate issues.
That figures.
cathyx
Perhaps the management was looking for a way to let some workers go, and this way was a good random selection of employees.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
Well, there goes a self-fulfilling prophecy there. He fired them for orange shirts thinking it was a protest. Anyone else imagine that this might lead to a minor protest involving, wait for it….orange shirts?
quannlace
It certainly is in Florida.
cathyx
Let’s face it, orange doesn’t look good on anyone. No wonder they were picked.
c u n d gulag
Orange you sorry you wore orange?
And mistermix,
“…stupidity is legal.”
Not only is stupidity legal, in most places, it’s required to move up in management – and in Conservative politics.
mai naem
How come there’s nothing in the story about what people wearing orange would be protesting?
I used the google and I don’t even see anything that would affect a law firm in florida. Wearing orange to protest North Korean repatriation? I don’t get it.
SiubhanDuinne
What does The Orange One John Boehner have to say about this?
Brazilian Rascal
I don’t want to sound cross, but middle-class americans (that are not public workers) would sooner drown their children quietly and go back to watching Celebrity Apprentice than causing any sort of stir against the winner class.
It’s not any different here.
Tonybrown74
@cathyx:
Speak for yourself.
Orange looks FANTASTIC on me.
Elizabelle
@c u n d gulag:
This makes me laugh.
What would they have been protesting? News item is silent on that.
SiubhanDuinne
@mai naem:
If you watch the short video accompanying the story, the woman (one of the fired employees) mentions that there’s a new supervisor or someone who tans too much and has orange skin. Maybe the firm thought the orange-shirt-wearers were protesting the orange-skinned person.
Or something. I can’t really sort out the stupid going on here.
Nylund
The comments are just as crazy as the story!
IE, “People did legal things on their own free time with their own money that I don’t like so they deserved to lose their jobs!”
W. Kiernan
There are fourteen of us and one of him. Let’s kick his ass.
SiubhanDuinne
@Elizabelle:
Anyway, isn’t orange the state color in Florida? Because of all the, ah, ORANGES there?
Soonergrunt
@mai naem: If you’re of Irish Protestant descent, wearing orange on St. Patrick’s day is a form of protest.
Quarks
They were, obviously, protesting that they didn’t get to go into the Florida sunshine that helps make all of those nice juicy oranges enough. Either that or something about Ireland. It’s a very mixed political message, I must admit.
The Snarxist Formerly Known As Kryptik
@Elizabelle:
Could be implying that there was NO protest supposedly connected to orange shirts, and the exec either just wanted an excuse or is approaching toward senility. Either way, guess who pays the price…and guess who sticks up for this kind of decision no matter how balls out unfair and stupid it is.
Employment-at-will: as much a Florida Sham as Stand Your Ground and drug tests for welfare.
El Cid
Maybe they could all be hired back at minimum wage, no benefits, and no seniority, and all’s well that ends well.
Steve
Sooner is right. One of our partners always wears orange to cheese off the Irish Catholic partner (although they are actually good friends). What likely happened here is that some Catholic higher-up got offended and told this executive to fire everyone without really explaining why.
RSA
Also not in China, Mac McClelland describes working as a “wage slave” in the American midwest, in a Mother Jones article. All that stuff that comes to our mailboxes a few days after ordering online? Somebody has to make it happen, and the working conditions are not pretty.
Schlemizel
@Soonergrunt:
Thats the first thing I thought of. I used to wear orange on St. Patty’s day as a joke since I lived in a very Irish neighborhood. But given the ugliness of orange/green violence quit doing that because its not funny.
Sadly there is probably nothing these guys can do unless the shame of the stupidity of the firing could be enough to make the assholes reconsider. HAHAHA who am I kidding, their screwed
mark eaton
Most telling are the comments associated with the original article. Wow!
TR Donoghue
If the shirts were being worn to protest working conditions, such as pay, the workers are like engaged in a protected, concerted activity under the NLRA.
Nylund
So the best I can figure out is that there was a new manager who had a really bad fake tan and had orange skin (a la Boehner) and management thought the orange shirts were making fun of that person. Is that the “protest” they’re talking about? Or was the lady in the video mentioning the badly tanned manager after the fact merely to highlight and mock these ridiculous firings?
Jamie
If you’re a lawyer you should have been able to pick up on the fact that you’re employer is an Irish Catholic and doesn’t have a sense of humor.
Jonny Scrum-half
Despite Florida (and really most states, maybe all) following the “employment at will” doctrine, the National Labor Relations Act still might apply, if in fact the employees were engaged in the concerted activity of protesting something that related to their terms and conditions of employment. In other words, if there was a protest against management and the employees were fired because of it, that might be an unfair labor practice that could be remedied by the National Labor Relations Board.
However, the facts appear to be that the employees wore the orange shirts to make fun of a manager who was obsessive about tanning. There’s nothing illegal about firing employees who do that.
Quarks
@Jamie: From the article, the impression I’m getting is that the fired workers weren’t attorneys, but paralegals, legal secretaries and so on. It’s unclear how much association they had with senior executives in the firm.
The article also suggests that they do this every Friday, and thus the wearing orange on the day before St. Patrick’s Day was just a coincidence.
S. Lamar Garner
They probably also wore blue pants/skirts. In which case I’d fire ’em too, for being Hated Gators.
Jeff
@quannlace: @mark eaton: Glancing through the comments in the article made my jaw drop too. Such concentrated stupidity in one place, the earth may shift off it’s axis.
Soonergrunt
@Quarks: More than anything, it looks like the bosses are just assholes who jumped on something, and realizing that it wasn’t what they thought, decided to piss on the underlings anyway because to do otherwise might look weak.
Jeff
@mai naem: Orange was the color of the Northern Irish protestants, who supported “King Billy” (i.e. William of William and Mary, who opposed the Catholic King James II. Wearing orange in an Irish pub is asking for a beating.
Villago Delenda Est
This guy “understood” that a protest was under way, involving wearing orange shirts, and on the basis of that “understanding”, without bothering to ask anyone wearing an orange shirt, he fired them.
And they have no legal recourse over this.
This is how you destroy a social contract.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jonny Scrum-half:
Objection! “Facts” not in evidence!
There’s a heap of speculation that it was making fun of a manager, but not a scintilla of evidence to support that notion.
Karounie
Maybe the firing manager had heard the term “Great Orange Satan” somewhere.
Quarks
@Soonergrunt: :: nods :: And they might have figured that this sort of thing would motivate the rest of their employees, in a “wow, if they’ll fire us over a shirt, I REALLY can’t be late” kinda way.
Unfortunately, although that’s nice in theory, it practice it usually leads to a couple of days of being on your best behavior, followed by weeks of resentment, distrust and irritation.
MattMinus
I don’t think this really represents a problem with the law so much as very stupid,or dishonest, management.
Almost every state has at-will employment, and you don’t typically see these things happening. It’s just bad business. There are definite costs to replacing a worker from an HR and training perspective. If I understand correctly, these folks can all collect because they were fired without cause, and that will also hit the firm in the wallet.
In theory, at-will employment also benefits workers, as they can leave for a better opportunity at any time.
This is just a man bites dog story, not a social justice issue.
Steve
@Jamie: As these comments should make clear, a great many people have no clue that orange has anything to do with making a religious point.
Chyron HR
They should also appreciate not having jobs, apparently.
Jonny Scrum-half
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, no evidence other than the woman who was interviewed said “so we decided to wear orange because we got a new manager that started on March 2nd there, I guess she had a complex about her tanning, she’s orange.”
I’m going to have to overrule your objection.
Villago Delenda Est
@Jonny Scrum-half:
“For the past few months” they’d been doing this, and the new manager was hired two weeks ago.
Right. So, clearly, this protest was started before the new manager was hired in anticipation of that event.
Glad you’re not a lawyer.
handy
@El Cid:
Hmm, I think you’re on to something.
honus
@cathyx: I believe orange is one of the school colors of the University of Florida. Who was playing in the NCAA tournament Friday. Against Virginia, whose school color is also orange. Some protest.
Actually, the firm may shot itself in the foot (and demonstrated some legal stupidity) by ostensibly firing the workers for a “protest.” That could possibly be construed as a protected activity. Should have just fired them because the management was FSU fans. Under right to work, that would be perfectly OK.
Chris
“Such stupidity in one place”? This is fucking Florida, where when someone tilts the playing surface that is America all the loose bits shake down to.
Were I shopping for professional services, I’d be inclined to not hire a law firm so stupid as to mistake a happy hour crew for a Northern Irish sectarian incident.
Tyro
I don’t think this really represents a problem with the law so much as very stupid,or dishonest, management. …
This is just a man bites dog story, not a social justice issue.
When stupid or dishonest management that causes so many people to lose their jobs for capricious reasons is so banal as to be a “man bits dog story”, we have a social justice issue on our hands.
Villago Delenda Est
I might add that these employees were going out as a group, and wanted to identify themselves as a group, after hours. Which means, heaven forefend, they’re working together after hours as a team, like they do in the workplace, which means, ZOMG, their morale is good!
Quick! Act swiftly to destroy the morale of everyone else at the firm who dares to reflect their good spirts on the job after hours!
Chyron HR
@Villago Delenda Est:
But can we really trust liberally biased calendars?
Nathaniel
I would fire the 4 who wore the shirt so they could appear to be a group at happy hour, that is just stupid.
Scott P.
Perhaps this was meant in jest, but unless their employer was named Murphy, spoke in a brogue and wore a tam o’shanter to work, they may not have known. I certainly don’t know the religious affiliation nor the ethic origin of the vast majority of my co-workers. Even if they knew that one of their bosses was an Irish Catholic, there are plenty of Americans who wouldn’t know of the significance of the color orange in that context.
Davis X. Machina
@cathyx: That would be legal in most states, yes.
Chyron HR
@Scott P.:
Well, the important thing is that they deserved to be fired for
engaging in an unspecified political protestmaking fun of their manager’s fake tanmaking fun of their Irish bosswhatever damn reason their feudal lords want.Ben Franklin
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0076734/
zoot
“employment at will”
you mean a “no rights for workers” state, a “slave labor” state?
Jonny Scrum-half
@Villago Delenda Est: Well, I won’t bother telling you what I do, but I didn’t hear the woman interviewed say that they’d worn orange shirts every Friday for the previous few months. That’s what the news story said, but the woman interviewed said that she and her co-workers had simply worn t-shirts with an inscription that said something that they needed to cover up while at work. She said nothing about orange until she specifically said that they wore that color because of the new manager who, because of her tanning, was “orange.”
You can ignore what she said and make snide comments about me, but you can’t change those facts.
Soonergrunt
@Quarks: Yup, and that leads to malicious compliance.
You know–doing EXACTLY what the requirement is, and no more. Clocks in exactly at 8:00AM and out exactly at 5:00 and takes exactly a 60-minute lunch. Files for overtime for answering the phone at home and so on. Doesn’t tidy up the staff room because that’s someone else’s job.
I worked in a place like that for about six months before I got something better. As it happens, it was a law firm.
Soonergrunt
@zoot: That’s what it’s like in Oklahoma. I’m so glad I work for the Federal Government.
MattMinus
@Tyro:
After watching the video, I’m not even sure it was a capricious firing. It’s pretty clear that there were past issues with the dresscode around the social gatherings and that they had been warned about it.
I don’t buy that they just accidentally chose a color that they knew would tweak the bosses wife who was their new manager. Really? You did that by accident?
Again,I’m not taking sides, but this sounds more like a typical workplace slapfight that got carried away than anything.
Pap Finn
Reading the comments on the original article only deepens my suspicion that middle class ‘conservatism’ is really little more than a primitive bootlicking reflex: “If we jack off the Alphas, they’ll give us more bananas, and then the whole ape troop thrives!”
Jesus Christ, it’s so contemptible I can hardly stand it.
Ben Franklin
@Quarks:
Tyro
@Villago Delenda Est: Actually, in some workplaces, particularly WalMart-esque employers, any talk of employee “committees” or “groups” or anything is immediately quashed in order to prevent the possibility of unionizing.
Jeff
@Quarks: and declining productivity, leading to more threats of dismissals, leading to more resentment and ” presenteeism”… as the law firm circles the drain. Not that that would be bad if they represent the banks.
THE
But. Isn’t Florida famous for oranges?
Tyro
@MattMinus: On a second-reading, I realize I misread your original comment. I misread “man-bites-dog story” as “dog-bites-man story.” It’s certainly possible there’s some kind of workplace bullying issue going on… unlikely, but possible. I’m willing to consider that on the scale of things, the consequences of some people losing their jobs might be that the precious fee-fees of dumbass lawyers might get hurt, and they might look bad in public. Doesn’t seem like a particularly fair trade, but it’s the best we can hope for.
rikyrah
I thought this was from The Onion at first.
So, I don’t wanna read no more shyt about us womyn folk being ‘hysterical’ about women possibly getting fired about birth control.
Phil Perspective
@SiubhanDuinne: And orange is one of the colors of the Florida Gators!!
Corner Stone
The video only adds confusion about what actually happened here.
The lady interviewed certainly seems to admit there was a concerted effort to single out a specific person at the firm.
butler
@Jonny Scrum-half:
Damn facts, always getting in the way of wild speculation.
Except that’s not what she said. She said they had been doing this for a while, then the new manager showed up, then they got fired. She theorizes that the manager, being “orange” herself apparently, took personal offense to a practice that predated her arrival and was not directed at her. She never states that this color choice was directed as a protest against the manager.
Jeff
@Tyro: This sounds more like the real story-the management crushing any nascent gathering of employees out of the workplace, no matter how innocent, to prevent any unionization attempts.
trollhattan
I think the firm should have brought in a neighborhood watch captain from Orlando to handle these orange-clad miscreants.
No Wolverining on company time!
cckids
@Elizabelle:
Here in Vegas, orange is the color of Occupy. Is that the case anywhere else? That is the first thing that came to my mind.
But the St. Patrick’s day thing is probably it. Don’t the management have some actual job to do? They pick up on this & fire people on this kind of a whim without even speaking to them? In this economy? Assholes.
Rudi
The contact page has the firms email link. Swamp the assholes with ORANGE emails…
John M. Burt
I used to resent this “green-on-St.-Patrick’s” thing, until I thought carefully about where the tradition came from:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9_C3bKnXAA
BTW, I also never insult or demean Jesus when criticizing the behavior of modern-day Christians, because I don’t care to take the side of the people who killed him.
Jennifer
It would be just awesome if other firms took notice of this, and every time they meet with Elizabeth Wellborn attorneys or face them in court, the opposing attorneys wear orange ties, shirts, suits, whatever. Turn the firm into the joke it already clearly is.
My last firing, by a company that pretty much fired people whenever they were about to owe them big on commissions, the manager tried to get me to sign some bullshit about how I had been given “warnings”; I just said, I’m not signing this bullshit, because I never got warnings about anything. Then he tries to claim they were verbal warnings. I say, yeah, that explains why at the sales meeting last week I got a $200 bonus from the regional boss for the employee doing the best job. I scratched through the BS about “warnings” on the sheet, initialled where I had crossed it off, then signed it. All in all, I made him spend 30 minutes on firing me. Fuck it, at this point I’ve got nothing to lose, and I know he’s uncomfortable because he knows it’s BS, so no need to make it easy on him. When I was leaving, I told the manager, “I don’t envy you – it’s a crappy job you’ve got, but I suppose they have to find someone who’s WILLING TO DO IT for them.”
Ultimately, I ended up getting all my commissions, which to the best of my knowledge no one else they ever fired got from them. So it was well worth my while to be difficult about it – it made them nervous enough to pay me in order to ward off any potential legal difficulties.
Jonny Scrum-half
@butler: I refer you to the videotape. She specifically said that they decided to wear orange “because” of the new manager who was “orange” as a result of her “complex” about tanning.
The reference in the news story to employees always wearing orange on Fridays may or may not be true, but it’s not fair to call it a “fact,” since I’ve seen way too many news articles get fundamental things completely wrong. When comparing the reporter’s story against the videotape of one of the employees, I’m going to rely more on what the employee said.
By the way, shouldn’t we take a step back for a second. Does it really make sense that an employer would fire people simply for wearing orange? (I know that some have speculated that it was an Irish Protestant/Catholic thing because of St. Patrick’s Day, but there’s really no evidence to support that either the employees or the employer had that in mind.) I know that people can be irrational and jerks, but it would be extremely odd that a small employer would fire a large chunk of its workforce simply on a whim, or as a power trip, as other commenters have suggested.
kindness
Did you see the comments over at the Florida Sentinal page? Most those dicks automatically proclaimed the fired workers were traitors, subversives and criminals.
It’s really sad to see just how many idiots we have here in the US.
WereBear
Based on my own experience working in Florida, the boss saw the orange shirts on Fridays, decided it was some kind of “protest” and fired them all. Because he could.
In the former slave states, any form of solidarity has to be slapped down hard.
Fester Addams
Tyro’s got it. It’s a “protest” because that’s the only word in the corporate lexicon for (any kind of) worker solidarity.
John S.
The Sun-Sentinel is notorious for freeper comments. My theory is that because this area is overwhelmingly liberal/Democratic that the handful of conservatives vent in the only way they can. Because they sure as fuck aren’t winning any elections any time soon around here.
Tyro
@Fester Addams: I dunno. It could be various things. All the way from the claim that the employees were passive-aggressively mocking a supervisor over her tan, to the supervisor showing up and taking a pre-existing orange-shirt tradition personally to this being a capricious act of showing the employees “who’s boss” by firing them for being too close. Unless there’s some kind of egregious misconduct, and if everyone is doing their jobs, I am perfectly fine with not giving the employer the benefit of the doubt and subjecting them to some public scrutiny and humiliation. An employer is an institution does not have feelings or families or anything resembling the sort of sympathy owed to individual employees.
Herpderp
@Jonny Scrum-half
She’s obviously talking about why they were fired (“because” the new manager is orange), not why they were wearing the shirts.
brantl
@MattMinus: Mattminus, consistently dumb as a post.