Interns Get Fired En Masse After Protesting Dress Code at Work
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I interned at four separate companies when I was younger. I would have never even conceived the idea of doing something like this. Besides the fact that it's three months (seriously, they couldn't wear dress clothes for three months?), a company is not a democracy. I think this might be a side effect of my generation being told they can change anything they want in the world just by signing a petition.
Oh what a load of crap
Generous? Companies use interns for cheap labour (sometimes free). There's nothing generous from their part
I find it very hard to believe they are doing nothing of value whatsoever. Really hard
Not paying interns seems to be a USA thing though.
As an intern I worked with C software, both in Linux and Windows, of course I had less experience and needed "more" supervision, but it was far from worthless. My code ended up in actual products sold by the company. And yes, I was paid for it.
See how much Google pays their interns.
There are lots of intangible benefits too, but I can well imagine that in a straightforward reckoning the net value is close to zero, especially for short internships.
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.
Which, according to the original source, is exactly what they did with the supporting argument that at least one employee didn't follow dress code, resulting in them being shut down with no answer:
> I felt the dress code was overly strict but I wasn’t going to say anything, 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.
> I spoke with my manager about being allowed some leeway under the dress code and was told this was not possible, despite the other person being allowed to do it. I soon found out that many of the other interns felt the same way, and the ones who asked their managers about it were told the same thing as me.
It definitely sounds like management would prefer to force the lone employee to follow dress code than to allow everyone else to break it.
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 who was allowed to disobey the dress code was a former soldier who lost her leg and was therefore given permission to wear whatever kind of shoes she could walk in.
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.
So no not everyone involved here was a dick, there was a brat on one side that decided to effectively unionize the internets over shoes and a company that would not be able to function if a petition means that employees not to mention interns get whatever they want.
Day 1 - petition for shoes. Day 3 - petition for bagels. Day 7 - ????
You can't cave to pointless demands of interns especially after you already said no to them, you don't need to give them a justification when your boss says no arguing continuing on arguing with them is usually pointless unless the circumstances changed.
Passing around a petition to force the hands of your managers would never lead to good results, this isn't about employee rights this isn't about unions this is about young people acting up because likely no one to that point ever said no to them because they were too afraid.
I've seen what happens in schools lately at least in higher education where teachers seem to be afraid of their students rather than the other way around, I somehow feel lucky that I was at the borders of this generation before things went out of head and I remember when being rude to a teach or disruptive in class meant a call to my parents and a whole lot of trouble to me.
We somehow went from standing up when the teacher enters the classroom and showing respect to showing the middle finger and getting angry parents defending their kids because they are special.
We went from higher education being a place of critical thought where people were challenged with multiple views and paradigms to a place of safe spaces where students can rally because a teacher hurts their feeling when they talk about touchy subjects.
It seems that over a few decades we went from a society that aimed for the stars and challenged everything to an infantile group that things that cuddling each other is the most important thing in life because everyone is special in their own way.
And I'm really happy that these for lack of a better word "kids" learned this the hard way and early enough that they might still snap out of it, no one owes you anything not even an explanation, life isn't a democracy at best it's a meritocracy you are valued based on what your actively bring to the table not merely because you exist.
But then amusingly, your plaintive comment on "how things are" quickly turns into an impassioned rant about "how things should be" - which funnily enough is just how things used to be. Maybe you learnt the rules, you did the hard yards, you are just starting to get ahead, and now these upstarts are trying to change the rules.
Your whole argument turns on respecting the power structures of the status quo. It seems so horribly entitled to suggest that because the current power structure of organisations support dictator style management, that one cannot try to find ways to undermine that power structure. Organising, complaining, publicly naming and shaming, are just some of the levers to pull to try to readjust the current power structures in your favour.. and why wouldn't you? What manager respects and rewards quiet acquiescence?
But companies are not governments, the voice you have in what's going on in the company is tied directly to your value to said company, or if you are an investor then to just how much of the company you actually own but as most employees are not investors and even those who get stock usually get non-voting stock it doesn't matter.
Employees have voices but they do not make the decisions unless they've been granted the permission to do so. Companies with flat structures and lack of hierarchies don't tend to work out, it's very nice when everyone is equal and everyone is their own boss but it also boils to a mess where no one is responsible for anything and people end up doing what they want instead of what the company needs them to do.
If you actually have concerns about the company and you are debating something that would have an actual impact on the companies outlook every good manager would hear you out and take your opinion under advisement.
Discussing company policy which has nothing to do with how would the company perform is a silly battle. Going against the backs of your managers and stirring up trouble is a stupid thing to do and if you are not in a good position to begin with mostly because you do not represent any substantial value to the company you should not be expected to keep your job.
Over 10 years I've oddly enough worked only for 2 employers, the first one I left mostly because the work I did didn't interest me and when they tried to make me offers to stay including starting a new team/department I told them I appreciate it but i don't think that the company should focus on that field (they did it anyway about 3 months after I left and closed up that department after less than 1.5 years), I've been with my current employer for over 6 years.
And I never had problems telling any of my managers (including the CEO) that they are wrong or that something is incorrect but I do form pretty good arguments and I pick my battles if I need to spend 2000$ more on IT gear for everyone of my teammates I rather build a business case around that than pick a fight about the quality of the beans in the coffee machine. (Also quite important is not to only make a good solid argument, is to do so respectfully and not waste their time over nonsense or things that are out of their control in the first place.)
What the woman in the article did was equal to fighting over italian roast, she didn't even made a business case for why the policy should be changed, no she fought a policy by making a list of people that do not want to wear dress shoes.
If anything has failed her here it's her education system that up till now didn't tought her that a petition is worthless, that if you want to something to change you build a position of substance and argue that one.
Instead she probably got through high school where you can make a petition to bully a teacher that dares to teach you matters that make you uncomfortable and then went to college in which the teachers were so afraid of their students that they probably deserve combat pay.
P.S. I don't think that it's fair to equate the current management style of most companies to dictatorships, if you manage to create a better structure that can be applied to any company larger than 2 people which is substantially different well then you going to make quite a bit of money both because you have created a successful company and that every management school out there would probably love to pay you to lecture there. I'm sure that the likes of the London Business School are already holding their breath.
"Nothing is wrong with the current management structure we have"
Completely indefensible. There is plenty wrong. No small part of what is wrong is to do with the way people's egos and prejudices get turned into policy and power. And there are a whole world of options between dictatorship and direct democracy. Everything else you describe past this point is, once again, a description of how things are, not how they should be. Your experiences are a description of how to function under an inopportune power structure.
Just as it is fair to say that the manager decided that this act was insubordination and needed to be punished by a firing, it is also fair to say that if there is a company policy which does not effect revenue but does effect quality of life, then it is perfectly reasonable to organise with your fellow workers to change it. The only error from the interns here was about not gathering enough power to actually see through the change.
"If anything has failed her here it's her education system that up till now didn't taught her that a petition is worthless, that if you want to something to change you build a position of substance and argue that one."
Fully agree with this, but as a starting point of not understanding the way something works, testing it, finding the edge cases and breaking it down is a good start. Do you not do this with every new tool you use? Besides, the real issue you alluded to before is that they basically didn't get that by signing a petition they were organising. The boss understood this and his over the top response is indicative of why organising needs to be protected in law (in a fair and balanced way).
PS. "I don't think that it's fair to equate the current management style of most companies to dictatorships".
Fair enough, oligarchy then.. When the choice is 'my way or the highway', and when they are telling you how to act and how to dress, how else would you describe it?
An intern decided they were going to try and force a companies hand and was fired. Not much to see here.
if companies fear the actions of their employees, why hire them in the first place.
Sounds like an abusive relationship to me
That's the key. The actual issue at hand probably didn't matter as much as the fact that the lowest of the low had figured out how to work together outside the official hierarchy. That made it a threat not to policy, not even to the people who could have simply said yes or no, but to the hierarchy itself. What happens when you attack the hierarchy? Scorched earth, baby.
Yes, it was a bit entitled of the interns to expect a change in the dress code. A simple "no" would have sufficed if that were the real issue, but it wasn't.
They certainly can, they just don't want to.
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.
http://www.askamanager.org/2016/06/i-was-fired-from-my-inter...
With the facts given, both the advice columnist and commenters don't seem to be particularly sympathetic to the interns.
In those days even IBM Field Service Engineers who repaired Selectric Typewriters wore suits. Their shoes were so well shined you could see your face in them.
These days I work from home. Sometimes I walk the hall to the cafeteria (the kitchen) without my suit jacket. I expect to be written up sometime soon.
Here's a clue a very senior manager (Ralph Gomory, IBM Research Division President) once gave me...
Managers make decisions. Only go to management with your need for a decision and always present the options.
They went to management with what was, in essence, a complaint. Worse, it was a complaint that had nothing to do with the business. Clearly they were not keeping the business uppermost in their priority queue. So management made a business decision and fixed the problem.
We had a "mass revolt" among the systems programmers across all of the IBM internal sites. We would only get "upgraded processors" after the customer returned an old one. We were working on trailing edge equipment. Unfortunately our internal memos (the "Tandem Memos") got leaked to Computer World (the big newspaper of the day). I got called "on the carpet" by senior management. I expected to be fired.
Fortunately IBM Corporate management saw that we were complaining about the business, not about personal issues. They changed the policy and we got leading edge equipment.
Mass protests sometimes work but they need to focus on improving the business. Unless you're in the fashion business it is hard to see how dress code protests matter.
Of course it doesn't have anything to do with the business
But some companies will see their good employes leave, old employees retire and then won't find out why they can't compete and can only retain the worse professionals.
You wander into my office with a "petition" signed by some employees stating that the "Free coffee needs a better quality bean" or "We want to wear jeans to work".
It looks to me that you've just solved both of my problems.
A few less employees who fail to focus on improving the business will help me reduce expenses and make payroll. It also gives me some spare cash to buy better quality coffee. Both problems solved by self-selection.
People seem to think that "being a good culture fit" is a new idea. But IBM used to "write up" employees who failed the dress code as "not a good culture fit". If the company wants polo shirts, wear polo shirts. If the company wants suits, wear suits.
Running a company is hard. Your suppliers demand immediate payment. Your retailers demand volume discounts. Your sales people want "promotion specials". Your landlord wants more money. Your employees demand "competitive wages". Your competition announced a new product. Your major customer threatened to quit.... And YOU want to argue about dress code? Will all those who don't focus on improving the business please step forward.
And yes, running a company is hard.
If you're so strapped of cash why are you wasting money enforcing a dress code (unless necessary)? Will that increase revenue or cut cost?
> And YOU want to argue about dress code?
I would probably be fuming as well if I got a complaint unrelated to the core business. But guess what, your employees are not robots. Sure, it's not inhumane to demand a dress code or the fact that the free coffee sucks. But it will make them think twice if another opportunity shows up and the first to move are usually the ones with more skills.
Do you know who was fired for being a poor culture fit? John Lasseter
IBM "enforced" a lot of things beyond dress code. I got called on the carpet for answering a question at a conference because I was not an IBM official spokesperson. Everything (including dress) about the company mattered.
If you want a company image then dress code matters. FedEx people who drive trucks still wear uniforms. Airline pilots wear uniforms. Losing the company image loses a reason to work for the company. IBM today is run by people who forgot that. It seems to me that IBM will go out of business shortly based on that loss of "cachet".
IBM repair people wearing suits sent the message that IBM CARED about business, about perception, about quality. It showed they pay attention to their front-line workforce. It transmits the idea that this person is well-trained, not picked out of a lineup. IBM invested in that training (something most companies don't do anymore).
IBM people never complained that they felt like robots. They were universally proud to work for the company. IBM didn't fire, they retrained. (Not anymore, though. And you can see it on the IBM postings.) IBM people cared about quality. If something was wrong they worked to make it right and they were backed by management, even if it really wasn't IBM's fault. Robots, no. Workers who were proud of and cared for the company, yes.
Few companies seem to train employees, seem to care about quality, seem to care about a dress code as a corporate image. Starbucks seems to be "the new IBM" on those terms. They only recently allowed "visible tattoos".
I have "skills". The only thing that will make me want to move is a more "interesting" problem. If you show up with an interesting problem I'll wear Saran Wrap or anything else you want to work, dress code be damned.
> IBM people never complained that they felt like robots.
I think this is a mix of the cultural context of that era (where people dressed more formally) and the other items you mentioned, especially the dress code being part of their image
But then IBM got "old", other companies did other interesting things and stopped caring for formality and that's where we are today
I work at a place that has a dress code that harks back to the early 90s. After spending my 20's griping about dress codes, I actually enjoy it for the same reason: it's a physical reminder of my work identity vs my non-work identity.
I'm curious - how would you be more productive in casual wear? As an engineer, my main gripe was that I often worked in a lab and my tie and slacks would get snagged on the edges of the computer racks. Mostly that was an issue with ruining clothing. At the time, I remember the woman who worked full time running the lab was granted an exception to the dress code for that reason - she was constantly snagging clothing and ruining things from having to crawl around on the floor running cables and things, so they let her wear jeans and more generally rugged clothing.
Usually by taking less time to dress up and having better thermal comfort (especially in places that don't have air conditioning - yes, these exist)
Kind of like the Scouts, or priests, or soldiers? That's a good theory. All these groups do proper onboarding, though. You'd ask yourself what happened to the manager who let that batch of interns run loose. If it's East Coast finance you'd think he'd be up for culling next, in that line of work there is much indoctrination and elite-think, and the unit manager completely failed to impress on the interns just what a god-blessed lot they are to have gotten into the Company while still at school.
Or, like cattle.
If company wants me to dress a certain way, they can pay. Either buy the clothes or pay me more.
Otherwise its just shifting their expenses on to their own employees (and interns).
I've been working on a new model for employer / employee relations appropriate for the 3rd millennium that I'd like to share here:
Employers pay employees, not the reverse.
Almost like the "and that boy was Albert Einstein."
Is it really ethical to fire an entire group of people for merely questioning a rule? Is this really evidence they are "entitled" as comments here are saying? Perhaps the letter was worded very rudely?
Corporate America doesn't concern itself with ethics. Interns sending a common proposal (however polite) up the management chain is one step removed from unionisation, which is one thing Corporate America will shut down sites or states over.
Ideally, since employers hold most of the power, it should be feasible for employees to band together to even the playing field. This company is one I wouldn't want to work for.
That said, this article is non-news and it's just trying to manufacture outrage. I've flagged it.
Sure enough, I was treated better. While the other interns were crawling around pulling cables, I got to sit at a desk and program a computer.
Wearing business attire also got me better treatment when I needed it, such as dealing with some bureaucracy, or even retailers.
I'd be interested in knowing if this was still the case. If it's important enough to be fired for, I'd spend a few more bucks and dress nicer, as an investment, especially around performance review time.
Not sure why - maybe other HN commentators can help - but my attitude would not be the same if they were bankers, coders or meat packers.
Maybe because there are social expectations of what people wear for certain jobs.
So I'm a programmer and a transvestite meaning that yes I like to wear what is considered to be women's clothing. Basically I just like to wear whatever I like and makes me feel comfortable whether it was designed to be used by men or women. Most days I'm lazy in the morning so I put on very casual clothing but I decided that every Monday I would wear something extreme so I wear dresses, colourful skirts, stockings, whatever. I wanted to do this because of two reasons. First off Mondays can be very grey and boring. People return from their weekend holiday and generally feel a bit depressed having to start this weekly routine again. The other reason and the most important one is that we are to be accepted whatever we choose to wear. If a person cannot accept what I wear it's really their problem not mine. The company I work for is very flexible and open minded about these sort of things but if anyone would tell me to stop doing this I would quit immediately, no questions asked.
The company that you work for does not own you. Your boss is not your parent why should he/she get to limit your freedom of expression by telling you what to wear? Especially if you do not have to deal with customers (of course I understand that companies can have rules when their employees are facing customers that's a totally different story).
I don't know how your jobs are but I feel in mine I generally contribute a lot of time, effort and talent to it. A progress made in something I contribute to does not just happen because the company planned it. I can accept that I stay on the same wages while people higher in the hierarchy benefit greatly from something I achieved. That's just how companies work and I get paid well, I'm not complaining. However I will never accept someone trying to have affect on my appearance, not even as an intern. Sure interns have to prove that they are fit for the job but that goes for the work they provide, has nothing to do with what they wear.
And this has nothing to do with millennials or how they are self entitled. This is about basic human rights of all generations. Companies get 9 hours of our daily lives they shouldn't also get to choose what's in our wardrobe.
This is welcome to the real world kid, infact this should never have happened I don't understand how would anyone over 12 would think that a petition at your workplace could or should work.
You don't know what circumstances was she working at, you don't know why they were ordered to wear dress clothes (uniforms are pretty damn good for instilling discipline). Now I understand you situation and you also need to understand that not everyone has to be accepting of your situation including your employer this is perfectly acceptable without being discriminatory. You work as a programmer which means that you can wear pretty much what you want as long as you do not meet business clients or customers but not everyone else is in the same position as you. Some employees end up handling people, some of them just end up being in sight of customers, I don't care what you wear when you code something in a cubicle, but I don't want the worker in a funeral home wearing some crap, or my lawyer in a courtroom.
And you are right the company you work for does not own you, but the same goes the other way, it does not owe you anything either. It provides you with an environment in which you can trade your time for pay under a set of agreed circumstances if you do not agree to follow those guidelines you can find another place that allows you to trade your time for money under more palatable or acceptable terms.
So yes this has everything to do with "millennials" or well considering that I am one, entitlement and more like it than not way too many years of pampering by her parents and the educational system that had it's balance of power turned upside down that led her to believe she can just do everything if she signs a petition no matter how passive aggressive her behaviour is in reality.
But overall good for you for not accepting anyone to have an effect on your appearance but with all due respect that's your personal choice you can't claim it to be more important than the company you might work for one day wanting to present a specific image of it's employees that conflicts with your own personal dress code. At that moment you'll have a choice how much does your external look and what you wear affect who you actually are, if they are that big part of your life that you can't simply change it well then you are at an impasse but please don't make it to be that you somehow are better than a company that has a dress code when you have one too.
And I mean that, it is a totally different story. If employees have to face customers then it's up to the company to decide what kind of image they want to display. The interns in thin case were not working with customers directly.
"you can't claim it to be more important than the company you might work for one day wanting to present a specific image of it's employees that conflicts with your own personal dress code"
Yes I can, and I do. If I'm not working with customers directly the company should have no impact on my appearance. And this isn't about me thinking I'm better than the company, this is about mutual respect. I show my company respect by showing up to work each day and providing the work expected of me.
And if you really want to make this about millennials then yeah millennials are just realising how much bullshit things such as a dress code at work is. I said fascist because the suppression of expression is a fascist tendency.
And yes I have read your comment but it doesn't matter, your job description doesn't have to be customer facing to mandate a dress code, the image of the office especially if there is high foot traffic in it might be important to your employer, the ability to drag employees at will to meetings, pre-sale, video-confs etc which might include external people without needing to worry about what stupid shirt they might wear today is also a good enough reason and overall having an environment where everyone can pick fairly cheap office work/business attire without having to worry about what they wear also makes it comfortable for a lot of people.
Oddly enough the looser dress codes usually go against the direct benefits to employees they are a tool just like the beer fridge, ping pong table and video games room that companies use to remove the gap between your personal life and your work life, they want you to feel that the workplace is an extension of yourself and home is where your bed is when you aren't sleeping in one of the nice sleeping rooms at your work.
Work cloths on the other hand allow you to easily switch between work and your personal life, you put a suit in the morning you go to work, you take it off and boom you are in your saggy tshirt that says I'm with stupid doing whatever you want. So if you are against the workplace invading into your personal space during off work hours you might want to actually rethink what brining your own personal life into your workplace does and why some employers especially in tech encourage that.
Maybe I'm just in the tech industry bubble, but this seems extraordinarily strange for interns, who likely weren't external sales or consultants or one of the few holdovers where suits and sport coats are still a thing.
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 the other role he gets more and more hammered down.
This world is crazy.
Yeah - short sleeves, short pants, and a mandated indoor temperature over eighty degrees Fahrenheit. Talk about enforced good citizenship!
> 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 initially inquired about the possibility of relaxed dress code:
> I spoke with my manager about being allowed some leeway under the dress code and was told this was not possible, despite the other person being allowed to do it.
> They could have been lectured on professional behavior instead and I'm sure most of them would have understood.
I don't understand how sending queries/proposals up the chain is unprofessional behaviour. Ignoring the dress code and coming in not following it would be unprofessional behaviour.
They asked informally, they got shut down (rather than answered), they went with a more formal query, they were fired.
That's sounds nothing like "interns are guests" but it sounds a lot like Corporate America's reaction to union noises.
That's nice. What business of it was theirs, that they should be told at all? It smacks of a third-grade classroom, where little Susie is upset because little Janey didn't bring enough comfortable shoes for everybody, so Teacher makes a rule that either you bring enough for everybody or you don't bring any at all.
Of course, in a third-grade classroom, this sort of thing makes some sense, because we don't expect children of such a young age to be fully in command of their emotions. I gather the interns we're talking about are in their early twenties. One would reasonably expect them to have learned something in the decades since they were in third grade themselves, but perhaps that's too much to ask.
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.
Personally I can't imagine a story like this even occurring in 1986. The whole idea of mass protest over something trivial is a very 21st century concept.
The yahoo repost/clickbait framed it as a protest with no evidence I can see, the original source does not frame it as a protest: http://www.askamanager.org/2016/06/i-was-fired-from-my-inter...
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 issue was disclosed to them at all.
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".
Why? They saw something they didn’t like and wrote a letter suggesting an alternative. I see that as a very good attitude.
Many people grow up believing that protesting is the same thing. But at its foundation, it is resisting leadership direction.
Managers are people too- and at some point you have to cut your losses if you lose hope that you will be able to inspire your employees.
The managers know they are asking extra from the staff with dress codes in this day and age. It doesn't happen naturally, so they write policy. They expect to deal with resistance, and sometimes they are seeking out policy resistors for promotions. But a mass uprising is a huge fiasco to deal with.
You are missing the crux of the problem when you say they wrote a letter suggesting an alternative. They drafted a petition against leadership direction and had almost everyone sign it. That is a protest.
It is a serious problem for management and it requires action: capitulate to airhead interns who won't be here next year or cancel the program?
These kids should have known this, but like many young people, they had an opportunity to learn a lesson the hard way.
According to the original report they tried to and were shut down:
> I spoke with my manager about being allowed some leeway under the dress code and was told this was not possible, despite the other person being allowed to do it. I soon found out that many of the other interns felt the same way, and the ones who asked their managers about it were told the same thing as me.
They were told it was a medical exemption after having been summarily fired.
> This wasn't a protest, it was an angry mob.
Are you off your rocker? They wrote a fucking proposal they didn't try to put management to the torch.
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.
1. The interns saw a dress code violation and escalated immediately, without informing the out-of-line employee.
From the original blog post [0]:
"I felt the dress code was overly strict but I wasn’t going to say anything, 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.
I spoke with my manager about being allowed some leeway under the dress code and was told this was not possible, despite the other person being allowed to do it."
I'm certain the interns did not ask this coworker why they came in wearing non-standard shoes, because management had to tell them about the disability after the fact. Going directly to management to censure a coworker without discussing the issue with the coworker is sometimes justified. Minor dress code violations are not an instance where that behavior is justified. If this isn't apparent to the interns, that raises questions about their judgment.
2. The interns persisted in making it an issue after the first rejection.
Again, there are some workplace situations where it is appropriate to keep raising an issue after your first proposal is rejected. Minor dress code violations are not one of those situations. Again, from the blog post:
"I spoke with my manager about being allowed some leeway under the dress code and was told this was not possible, despite the other person being allowed to do it. I soon found out that many of the other interns felt the same way, and the ones who asked their managers about it were told the same thing as me. We decided to write a proposal stating why we should be allowed someone leeway under the dress code."
The proposal which led to their termination was not the first discussion of the issue. They asked, management considered their request and came to a decision. They then took more time (presumably out of the workday, though this is not clear) to write a petition restating the request. Continuing to focus on a very minor issue at the expense of more important things is another strike against their judgment.
3. The interns asked for much more leeway than the original infraction.
The coworker who inspired their petition wore non-standard shoes, hardly a large violation of the dress code. In response, "[The interns] requested that we also be allowed to wear running shoes and non leather flats, as well as sandals (not flip-flops though) and other non-dress shoes that would fit under a more business casual dress code. It was mostly about the footwear, but we also incorporated a request that we not have to wear suits and/or blazers in favor of a more casual, but still professional dress code."
Seeing one employee wearing non-standard shoes is not an endorsement of a less-stringent dress code by management. It is odd that they take the dress code so seriously, yet take the example of one employee not wearing leather shoes as a sign that the dress code can be relaxed to exclude suits. That hypocrisy on the part of the interns is at least as bad as any perceived hypocrisy on the part of management.
All of these lapses in judgment are bad enough to warrant censure. If an employee did this, counseling would be in order. But interns are explicitly not full-time, salaried employees - it is a trial run. (I don't take Alison Green's view that they are guests, but they aren't full employees either.) If the company's goal in having internships is to evaluate potential employees, then a lapse in judgment like this might mean that the company's interest is to let them go before the official end date.
[0] http://www.askamanager.org/2016/06/i-was-fired-from-my-inter...