Cyclist Lost Her Job After Raising Middle Finger at Trump’s Motorcade | Hacker News Reader

Cyclist Lost Her Job After Raising Middle Finger at Trump’s Motorcade

nytimes.com

27 pointspm2460138 comments

If Brendan Eich lost his job for supporting Prop 8, and James Damore lost his job for writing his famous memo, of course a company can fire someone who flips off the President. For better or worse (my opinion is worse), Internet activists have created strong precedents for private companies to terminate employees who aggrieve the Internet with their off-duty activities.

I won't speak to Damore's essay except to say that I thought it revealed Damore to be somewhat intellectually immature.

But Eich supported something that actively aimed to rob people of the right to pursue their own happiness through marriage. That's a big step beyond giving the bird to one of the richest and most powerful men in the world because he's doing a shitty job as a public servant.

> I won't speak to Damore's essay except to say that I thought it revealed Damore to be somewhat intellectually immature.

I won't pretend to know what essay you're talking about - this is just ad hominem.

Or in street parlance, name calling.

Somehow I don't think Eich and supporters of Prop 8 would characterize it that way. You believe that Eich is evil but it is possible that he is on the correct side of the issue and you are on the incorrect side. In any case he was participating in politics just like everybody does and should. He was fired for disagreeing.

The bicyclist was fired because she worked for a government contractor that felt it necessary to do its own kind of virtue signalling, to ward off the potential for lost business.

I think that the idea that there is a "correct" and "incorrect" side is a cognitive trap. If we try to break free of this trap, even for the things where there seems so clearly to be a correct side, we can better understand and talk to each other.

I never called him evil. I doubt he is, but I don't know him personally.

What he did, though, is he supported something specifically aimed at curtailing someone else's freedoms for no good reason. It's weird that people on Hacker News seem so okay with this, given how angry people seem to get about the abrogation of freedoms in the world of tech and business.

Imagine Eich supported a law that specifically barred you from marrying the person you loved. And by "supported" I mean "financially supported to the tune of $1000." Would you be so easy-going about it?

Should gay people be so easy-going about someone who wishes to rob them of freedoms the rest of us enjoy?

I don't think they should be.

"The cyclist actively undermined the freely and fairly elected President of the United States and the only person with a credible plan to make America great again. That's a big step beyond supporting a set of traditions that go back thousands of years and had majority support in California at the time."

In 2008, there was something like one or two US states and Canadian provinces that allowed same-sex marriage, and a couple or so European countries, and a few cities here and there. (Many others did provide alternatives to marriage, such as civil unions or domestic partnerships).

It wasn't until 2012, I believe, that same-sex marriage achieved enough support in any US state to actually win on the ballot [1]. It wasn't until 2013 that the ball really started rolling in Europe.

It seems kind of ridiculous to fire someone for supporting what was the mainstream position of the vast majority of the Western world at the time.

[1] Washington. That was a memorable vote, as not only did voters here approve same-sex marriage, they also approved recreational marijuana.

While I understand that people are frustrated by this outcome, she worked as a federal government contractor. This is akin to being fired for flipping of the chairman of the board of directors in a company. I understand that there are issues of free speech that can certainly be discussed, but the outcome was anything but surprising given her position.

HR is not your friend. One of her mistakes was going to them first. HR exists to protect the company. Employees are liabilities in many respects from their point of view.

Yes^2. Protesting has inconsistent, disproportionate costs to the "tall blade of grass." Regardless of customer image issues making her radioactive to government contractors, from a management perspective, her behaviors signaled impulsivity, pettiness and naïveté. They fired her for all these reasons and more perhaps. I hope she uses this wake-up call to self-select a more ethical line of work that isn't contingent on the government-industrial complex.

I would also fire my employee if she flipped the bird at the CEO of my top customer - in view of the press no less.

The president is not a CEO.

Ok, but he is kind of like a CEO. At the very least...you can see the analogy right?

He is the chief of the executive branch, and the commander in chief of the US military, so arguably he is a CEO.

Exactly, if you're a business in a political climate of any kind you have to keep up appearances regardless of your private beliefs.

This reminds me of the rodeo clown who lost his job after he mocked Obama:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/other/rodeo-clown-who-mocked-ob...

She worked for Akima - another company that does much business around the Washington DC area. Companies in that area never want to seem too anti-establishment.

Would it be okay if a cyclist had raised her middle finger at Pres. Obama? If we want to restore civility to our politics, we need to hold everyone to high standards.

No matter what you think of Trump, he holds the Office of the President and that Office should be respected. If you are angry with him for whatever reason, then the most effective way to channelize your anger is every subsequent election where he or his supporters are on ballot.

You have the right to free speech. You don't have the right to freedom from the consequences of exercising your right to free speech.

Well you can't be persecuted, prosecuted or retaliated against necessarily by a state or Federal government (subject to reason.. e.g. don't yell fire in a theater).. even if they employ you.. but with private employers all bets are off... except not sure what happens if you are a government contractor.. my guess is yes* which is why they asked her to resign.

My guess is flipping off the President is free speech.

*http://www.nytimes.com/1996/06/29/us/the-supreme-court-free-...

Nah, I bet asking her to resign was for not having to give severance pay or UI benefits.

Exactly. If the government arrests you for your speech, that's just the consequences of exercising your free speech.

She was employed in a state where the employer does not need a reason to dismiss. They could have fired her because "Hey, you're an employee and that starts with 'e'".

Not a sensible reason, but that's not a legal requirement there.

At will employment means you can be fired for no reason but not any reason.

That is still my favorite HR joke.

It seems like a series of unfortunate or possibly rash choices on her part: the first flipping off, the second when she caught up with the motorcade again, deciding to use the picture as her profile pic, and then going to HR to forewarn them. I'd like to think that even if tempted to do the first of these actions I would have stopped there and kept quiet until it had all blown over, not kept upping the ante.

Who goes to HR to brag about flipping off the head of state when your company relies on business from the government?

I didn't see that she was identified anywhere in the media. It wasn't until she made it her profile photo on Facebook that her employer found out. Does anyone know if this is accurate?

So glad she's fired.

Civility and decency must again become the norm. People should not live like animals.

must've missed the chapter on schadenfreude in civics and ethics.

Title is incorrect. She lost her job because she outed her self on a controversial image that went viral. She then shared that image on her own social media.

tl;dr - she played herself

Agreed. From the article:

> Ms. Briskman said she became aware of the photograph the next day, when Indivisible Loudoun ACTION, an anti-Trump Facebook group, posted Mr. Herman’s tweet and asked, “Who is this?” Ms. Briskman replied in the comments section that she was the cyclist.

I expect there will be no outpouring of sympathy from the “free speech” folks for this person.

Free speech doesn't mean freedom from consequence. As this case proves. I feel bad for this woman but it was entirely of her own making.

Heh... I stand up for the rights of Nazis to speak freely. Standing up for her isn't even going to get me bitched at.

However, free speech has consequences. This probably isn't a Constitutional matter, but she absolutely has the right to do this. They absolutely have the right (I'm pretty sure) to fire her.

So, I'm sympathetic but not surprised. Freedom of expression should be more than a part of the Constitution, it should be a societal goal. I'd much prefer a world where off-duty expression doesn't risk your employment but that's not up to me.

Err... Who are these 'free speech folks' that you're thinking of? We used to just call those people by the name, 'Americans.' The liberty of free speech applies to all, or none.

I can guess your meaning of "free speech folks", and I'm one of them. I don't think she should have lost her job.

All along, our central argument has been that the pendulum swings both ways. The same means which are used to silence the one side will work just as well against the other. That is free speech's raison d'être.

My impression is that the free speech folks want principles such as free speech to be applied equally to all sides. Unfortunately many of the hate speech crowd are so weak and disoriented that they can't grasp the disadvantages of their dogma, until their own rules are applied to them.

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