French man wins right to not be ‘fun’ at work in wrongful termination case
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It makes me upset that something basic like not wanting to drink lots of alcohol with your co-workers has to be justified with a legal framing of "freedom of expression". And Mr. T was fired in 2015, it took 7 years for this case to be concluded in the French court system. Not that French is an important qualifier, I fully expect the American legal system to take that long as well. It also makes me upset that the media's framing it as being not "fun".
In actuality, most people don't have the funds, the time, and the gumption to go through with a legal battle. You of course need to find a new job, but in the meantime you have financial obligations, and those don't wait 7 years to be satisfied.
The bastards count on this and relish it.
This seems to be a direct quote from the defendant ('specifically his refusal to adhere to the company's "fun" value') not a framing of the media. At least not more than your own:
> something basic like not wanting to drink lots of alcohol with your co-workers
(Of course after-work activities should never be mandatory, otherwise they'd be work, and the practices in this case especially seem terrible.)
Stay and put up is terrible advice. Rotten companies deserve to fail.
"Just find another job" either assumes that everyone can do this or that those who can't don't deserve a better environment. The former is not true, the latter is a form of discrimination.
> life is too short to waste it working with people who don't like to inject heroin into their eyeballs whilst riding dolphins bred in captivity around Seaworld. Just find a different company that will be less miserable.
I like a drink occasionally with friends after work. Some choose not to come. Some drink soft drinks. Some stay out until I can see the regret on their faces the next day. Everyone makes their own version of "fun".
What gets my back up most in a work environment is mandatory fun. Someone has designed an activity, a workshop, a day that is all about having FUN!!!!1! Except its their version of fun and we all have to play along or else you're the problem.
That's what bothers me.
It's not about life being short or people being "fun" or not. It's about my interpretation of what it means for me, and everyone else's interpretation of what it means for them.
I don't necessarily 100% agree with that opinion (I'm glad there is recourse against sexual harassment in the workplace), and I have a ton of sympathy for employees in more coercive job environments where there are few jobs and it's difficult to just quit and get another one. In this case, though, I highly doubt "Cubik Partners" is the pinnacle of consulting in Paris. If it were me, I would have said "fuck these guys" and peaced out.
In France, animosity between workers and management is constant, expected and considered normal. The jobs market is extremely illiquid (and unemployment was quite high at one point) which means once someone lands a job, they keep it and fight for it, even if the position is a bad fit. This overall ruins the experience for everyone involved except maybe lawyers and paper-pushers. The worst is that it's a positive feedback loop, where risk of this happening means that companies are even more reluctant to hire and/or implement unreasonable requirements that make job switching harder and ultimately make the market even less liquid.
In a well-functioning jobs market leaving and finding another job is indeed the easiest answer. But if you can't do that and have a mortgage to pay, your only option is to stick around and fight back.
In fact, in my over 35 years of work, the number of co-workers I wanted to go drink with is precisely zero. That doesn't mean I didn't like them.
The point here is that mandatory fun time isn’t a leisure activity if you are forced to do it, it is overtime work. If your not getting paid overtime to participate, then it is free labor. And you are never obliged to do free labor no matter how much fun you have with your co-workers otherwise.
Inclusion doesn't mean treating everyone like fragile butterflies. My neighbor is a 3rd level support agent for an enterprise storage hardware company that's very well known. He's been there for decades as has most of his team. They recently hired a new agent who took offense to my neighbor and one of his long-time coworkers chirping at each other (in good fun) on a team meeting call. No one took offense except this new person who took it straight to HR. It didn't take long for this new person to get on everyone's bad side and was then let go. Learn to read the situation.
I appreciate your noble intent, but "French" actually is an important qualifier. American courts are quite expedient relative to their French counterparts, especially in civil matters. I would expect such a case to take 3 years in the US, tops.
More to your point, this is where France's workplace protections are generally pretty good. It's hard to fire workers for anything other than gross negligence or incompetence, and the courts are generally biased in favor of the employee (which comes with its own set of problems, to be sure).
(Narcoleptics like myself have a somewhat unique perspective on this topic. I imagine other people with disabilities might have similar stories. But narcolepsy is a tricky one because it’s not very visible, and the optimal strategy is to conceal it as long as possible. I remember wandering around the streets of Chicago during my lunch break looking for anywhere to catch a nap, collapsing on a bench, then getting yelled at by some random security guard to leave.)
It's worse than that—at least in "right-to-work" states (ha!), they don't even have to come up with a sufficiently solid reason; they just have to not mention the actual reason. There's this bizarre system of incentives where you can fire someone for no reason (which I think is a bad thing), but you can't fire someone for certain specific reasons (which I think is a good thing), so it is better from the manager's point of view for an unethical manager to pretend to fire a worker for no reason and hope that no-one accidentally documents something.
Right-to-work is a specific anti-union campaign: https://www.nrtw.org/right-to-work-states/
Isn't it more accurately described as forcing a union to give you the negotiated benefits without requiring you to pay dues? I don't think anybody, on either side of the issue, is under any illusions, it is intended to break unions.
Thank you. I was not aware of this point.
As a person, who at one point had to deal with suddenly doing everything wrong, I cannot stress the importance of logging everything you do to ensure you have a leg to stand on if it comes to actual confrontation over unemployment benefits, which under current system in US, one may not be eligible for if the employer proves it was for a 'good' cause. For example, employee did not want to drink with me; is, likely, not a good cause, while 'he is unable to complete basic requests by deadline x' is.
And I do mean log every deliverable, conversation and so on. Memories fade and perceptions vary and your notes will be taken into account should it come to actual confrontation with employer. I was frankly spending more time documenting than a reasonable person should. It was sheer luck that things just kinda worked out and it did not get to that stage.
It's important to dispell the myth that it's difficult to fire people without cause. Perpetuating the myth, besides being factually incorrect, changes the conversation that should be had about the topic. Keeping it factual helps keep it objective.
It's simply untrue that it's difficult to fire people. The degree to which it is depends entirely on the integrity of the company and the people involved. Unless it's explicitly said, "we are firing you because you are <insert federally protected class>", and you have that in verifiable form (eg. email) and you're willing to press charges, everything else comes down to integrity. HR will have a cute procedure of warnings and meetings. There is no obligation for an employer to follow that. In fact, the contracts I've been under explicitly say they don't need to follow those procedures. My experience and observation is that they never do follow them.
I'm not sure how to fix that. You certainly can't legislate moral behavior. Maybe bind companies to actually follow their self-determined procedures?
I actually didn’t know I had narcolepsy when I got the job. The discovery happened on the job. It was pretty comical. He was putting increased pressure on me to make sure I was there at exactly 9 (rather than leaving at ~8pm or later like I usually did). So I remembered a coworker from my first job being miraculously cured by a CPAP machine. I suggest “let’s try out a sleep study, I bet I can get this taken care of.” So I do that and they couldn’t even wake me up for the 3rd check. (There’s three checks during a sleep study, and I was apparently the heaviest sleeper they’ve seen.)
They were like “So it turns out you have narcolepsy” and I told my manager “so it turns out I have narcolepsy” and he was like “so it turns out I can sidestep disability laws. Gimme two months, I’ll speedrun your notice.”
It was an interesting experience being booted out with no severance and no notice. It’s just one of the many reasons I simply don’t believe any manager when they go on about family values or protecting employees. Even if they have good intentions, they still answer to the person one step above them.
From an employee POV the optimal strategy is to treat everything professionally. When times get tough, be professional. It sounds trite, but if you do your best and try to do a good job, then you’ve done all you can, and you can be satisfied with the outcome. Even if it’s not in your favor.
Was super relieved to be out of that situation. Though not so relieved when the electricity was almost shut off. Luckily my wife got a job within a mouse’s breadth of losing the apartment.
His particular solution was to have me write security documentation and recommendations for clients deployed on Azure, then to say that the resulting documentation wasn’t satisfactory.
I actually noticed one morning my access had been cut off, so I snagged a few chat messages from my laptop. I went in and was called into the side room to be lit on fire.
In reality it’s not so dramatic, though at the time it felt like the end of the world. I was putting my wife through college so she could be a developer, and without a job we’d have to abandon those plans. None of that matters to an employer; they’re not here to accommodate people, they’re here to make money. And I say that with seriousness, not cynicism.
Your problems are your own. When I started transitioning to that mindset, I became both more professional and tougher. I expect to be laid off within one month as of this writing, and it’ll roll off my shoulders like I’m laying in a river letting the water flow by. It doesn’t phase me, precisely because this time around I planned from day one that day next-month would come.
I could have taken them to court, but I was a mess at the time. Getting on Prozac and taking care of my mental health really turned my life around.
With careful planning, I’ve managed to only miss one meeting.
Getting a diagnosis is the most important step. It helps you accept that it’s not your fault (a big one for me). Which lets you focus on delivering value in your niche, which is all that employers actually care about.
If I’d known I had narcolepsy, I wouldn’t have tried to get into an industry so focused on client meetings. So the planning phase is pretty crucial.
It's standard practice at my local food co-op. Those hippies are heartless.
EU and American labor laws are very very different. This has been brought into stark relief by the recent goings-on at twitter, in which several European employees were certainly fired illegally.
I know legal documents are often one-sided, but seriously, WTF??
I'm pretty sure that weird drinking games with sexual innuendo without consent wouldn't get any particularly favourable treatment in US courts either.
Sharing a freaking bed as an adult? Top-and-tail with a random colleague who may be in a relationship? What if they put you in a bed with someone you know has a crush on you? Or who has hygiene issues? Or who snores? No it absolutely isn’t accepted at work, unless France is completely different for professional and personal standards to the rest of the developed world. No functional HR organisation would accept the risk. Where would they stand if the other person touched you in the night and claimed they were asleep?
And this is a bank, not wilderness work or the Army.
So we'd stay as cheap as possible. Double, triple, quadruple up on rooms. Sleeping bag on the floor, scheduling who showers when. Learned the trick of laying a line of luggage down the middle of the bed, so if you accidentally snuggle up to something in the middle of the night, it's just a duffel bag.
I think per diem was in the $60-70/night range at the time, I don't recall exactly. But I know after a few months of working out of town, I was suddenly able to afford my next car without a loan.
But if the company tried to _require_ that? Oh, hell no. Heeeeelllllll no.
Our conferences always book double rooms and they are shared. Never a complaint as far as I know. BUT, our conferences are 100% optional, so you do not need to attend. Just saying that this "sharing bed" thing is not that unusual.
This is a IT consultants firm, btw.
That happened to me in the past, and it's something I will never accept again, but it's not sexual assault. It's just a result of crazy expensive hotels in some cities.
That's an extremely gratituous reading of the situation that is unwarranted.
You were not "forced" to share a bed, because nobody would give a fuck if you opted out and paid for your own hotel stay.
>Not saying that's what happened here, but
...you're implying it was a possibility. Why defend the corporate here?
I'm confident France's court would agree too
Cue my experience with Edward Jones Financial Services 20 or so years ago. Multi-day training out of state, and when I show up, I find that they put two people in each single bed hotel room. That was awkward. Had I been more secure financially I would have said no to that arrangement.
This is of course a great and somewhat obvious conclusion. Though the cynic in me thinks that Cubik Partners has simply learned they need to have other official reasons for firing people that fail to participate in the 'fun' in the future.
Most termination of employments here happens due to down scaling and then there is a first-in-first-out principle (which of course is skirted by categorising people differently so that different FIFO queues apply).
But being bad for just being slightly bad at ones work, or difficult to work with or something is almost unheard of after the up to 6 month probation period (during which the employment is basically at will).
They have nothing else to do. Their lives are painfully empty. Their personalities are painfully empty. Their time is otherwise meaningless.
The shit described here—all of it—suddenly feels indescribably unimportant when you have family, friends, side projects, hobbies, and a home to care for.
>An auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers in England sued the company over severe injuries he sustained at a work event that “made a competitive virtue” of “excessive” drinking, in a lawsuit filed in London’s High Court this year. Michael Brockie fell down in the street, went into a coma and later had part of his skull removed after participating in the company event
But much better [and more profitable] to fail to take responsibility for your own actions, do something really stupid, fuck yourself up... and then cast around for someone to sue.
For starters; No-one would be sacked for refusing to work in conditions which contravened H&S regs --and, if they were, they'd easily win a case for unfair dismissal.
And, in the other situation; joining in with the company drinking games is not part of anyone's job description. So, likewise, anyone dismissed for that 'failing' would have a nailed on 'unfair dismissal' case. Besides. Have you never worked anywhere with muslim colleagues or teetotal ones? I have and quite often they'd come to the pub on a works piss-up for the social element. But stick to alcohol free drinks all night. I never saw anyone trying to force them into having a pint or threatening them with dismissal if they didn't. It's laughably ludicrous.
No. The case I quoted is just another incidence of people failing to take responisibility for their own actions and seeking to excuse their own stupid and quite often horrific criminal behaviour by saying they were only going along with the crowd.
Having to drink is basically an unsafe working condition. It's just an unofficial unsafe working condition instead of an official one.
>If you think that nobody would be fired for refusing to work in unsafe conditions and nobody would be fired for not drinking, you're still agreeing that the situations are similar...
And if, instead of staggering out the pub and going on his arse, this eejit and his pissed-up mates had decided to drunkenly kick the crap out of some innocent passer-by, that would have been excusable too, because he only joined in to avoid losing 'social credit' with his workmates?
As has been explained to you twice, if you "legitimately refuse" to participate in bullshit social activities, in many organizations it is likely they'll find some other excuse to get rid of you.
I feel lucky that I'm a sociable guy, but I've seen other people who weren't so lucky suffer from it.
For goodness sake… The Office is not an instruction manual.
That’s ambiguous. He still might work at home. ;)
No shit not everybody will be okay with that. But what if it's a company where that's the stated culture and they want to do that? Where is the line? Should nobody ever be allowed to have a company centered around "work hard play hard" where they enjoy having colleagues they can work with and also have a good relationship with after work?
Moreso, are you going to force woman employees to attend these late night sessions? Will you expect muslim or mormon employees to drink? Or are you precommitting to not hiring any of them in the first place?
Alternately: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/femboy-hooters
I still absolutely hate attending them, yet it’s how you network and make yourself visible so it’s a must.
Even keeping dry (no alcohol for me) I find loud events disorienting and I’m sure a few people thought I was drunk.
Yet another way to feel like I don’t belong :/
This was not a business dispute or a clash between companies, 7 years is a long time when an individual has their individual rights violated.
That’s not fun. That’s a hostile work environment.
Perhaps this may be frowned upon here - but I think a manager is absolutely justified in letting someone go if they refuse to be a good teammate or socialize. Perhaps it seems silly but I absolutely have worked harder at companies when everyone was friendly versus ones where the work was atomized and impersonal.
[0] https://www-cubik--partners-com.translate.goog/rejoignez-nou...
probably the cost of the alcohol and hotel rooms he declined
Imagine if your boss pressured you to marry his son. How is this that much different?
Are you implying that that is common or accepted?
> The court ordered Cubik Partners to pay Mr T 3,000 euros and will examine Mr T's demand for damages at a later stage.
At a previous job, when I joined, it felt like I joined the kindergarden.
France’s highest court has ruled that a man fired by a Paris-based consulting firm for allegedly failing to be “fun” enough at work was wrongfully dismissed.
The man, referred to in court documents as Mr. T, was fired from Cubik Partners in 2015 after refusing to take part in seminars and weekend social events that his lawyers argued, according to court documents, included “excessive alcoholism” and “promiscuity.”
Mr. T had argued that the “fun” culture in the company involved “humiliating and intrusive practices” including mock sexual acts, crude nicknames and obliging him to share his bed with another employee during work functions.
In its judgment this month, the Court of Cassation ruled that the man was entitled to “freedom of expression” and that refusing to participate in social activities was a “fundamental freedom” under labor and human rights laws, and not grounds for his dismissal.
According to the court documents, the man was hired by Cubik Partners as a senior consultant in February 2011 and promoted to director in February 2014. He was fired for “professional incompetence” in March 2015 for allegedly failing to adhere to the firm’s convivial values.
The company also criticized his sometimes “brittle and demotivating tone” toward subordinates, and alleged inability to accept feedback and differing points of view.
Cubik Partners did not immediately respond to a request from The Washington Post for comment.
It is not the first time a company’s drinking culture has come under the microscope in court proceedings. A number of recent incidents have highlighted the entrenchment of alcohol in white-collar professional culture, even after the #MeToo movement shone a spotlight on workplace misconduct globally. Some firms have introduced “booze chaperones” at company events in hopes of avoiding such issues.
An auditor at PricewaterhouseCoopers in England sued the company over severe injuries he sustained at a work event that “made a competitive virtue” of “excessive” drinking, in a lawsuit filed in London’s High Court this year. Michael Brockie went into a coma and had part of his skull removed after participating in the company event, The Post reported.
In March, insurance marketplace Lloyd’s of London fined member firm Atrium Underwriters a record 1 million pounds (about $1.2 million) for “serious failures,” including a “boys’ night out” where employees, including two senior executives, “took part in inappropriate initiation games and heavy drinking, and made sexual comments about female colleagues,” the Guardian reported at the time.
France is among the world’s most liberal countries in terms of alcohol consumption. The legal minimum age for consuming alcohol in public is 18, but there is no regulation of alcohol consumption in private.
OR HERE
- high egos, lots of “fun”- sometimes at the expense of women.
He pitty them fouls!!!
Like someone shouldn't be obligated to stay after work to do "fun" stuff. But they shouldn't be constantly avoiding it and obviously not fit in at all with the company.
It's a fuzzy line that's hard to define, so I think the law is correct here in terms of drawing a line rather then keeping something ambiguous and fuzzy. But if we go beyond the law and look at it from a practical standpoint, this guy likely didn't fit in and likely wasn't a good team member in terms of getting along with people.
The laws say that work is just a job and if you do the work then you're good and that is the definition of the job, but it's often more then that. Your joining a team, a tribe a culture and sometimes many companies are looking for such a person.
Maybe they should list having fun in the job description. That we expect someone to have fun with us, be part of the culture and come to our parties and stuff like that. That would be a fair deal. I've been on teams where this stuff is important and on those teams they definitely didn't want a person who just came to work for a paycheck and left asap.
There are however tons of jobs where all they care about is your work and absolutely nothing else and I feel this guy should just look for that sort of job rather then trying to forcefully embed himself into a culture where he doesn't fit.
Doing hard drugs, as is alcohol, is not part of any legal contract.
My personal preference is to withdraw from any circumstances that include using hard drugs like alcohol with anyone you do serious work with. .. in fuzzy situations have a beer and make an excuse, it always works out better.
Case in point. In japan the outside of work stuff is a requirement for every job. You literally need to hang out with the entire team after work. This is the opposite extreme. What I'm advocating for is _join a team that fits_.
Don't fucking insist that you're _doing the job_ on a team that obviously wants more.
I would say the employer is at fault here for not making this obvious. BUT, firing the employee was correct. He didn't fit in, and HAD he known this, he shouldn't have joined.
Staying at the job WHILE knowing this is something that he shouldn't have done. He should have looked for another job and left as well. Quitting or getting fired is the inevitable outcome here.
If one is so open about it, like about firing employees for not drinking like the boss likes, can they post the details of the company you work at or run?
Should be no big deal, right? It's an acceptable social thing, and not sociopathic madness, so should bring no ill consequences if it's made public...
Let me reword my sentence a bit because I left some things implied but a lot of people didn't pick up on it. It should be an expectation put FORTH in the JOB DESCRIPTION before the employee is hired.
It is a reasonable expectation, PROVIDED the employee knew about the expectation BEFORE he is hired.
If he didn't know about it, and the expectation was sprung on him, then it is UNFAIR.
It is very reasonable to put forth in the requirement:
We are looking for a candidate who can get along with the team. The team likes to party and drink and they all tend to be very young. They do a lot of extracurricular activities together after work. Please only apply if you feel you can fit in well.
No, it's not. The above job description is honest and fair game. Let's not take this into other tangents that have to do with racism or sexual harassment. Be reasonable.
In the US, that would be inviting an age discrimination lawsuit. It's admitting that the company preferentially hires young people (which is illegal), and implying that older people wouldn't "fit in" and would thus be discriminated against.
No, I'm telling you is unfair, unethical, and illegal in many jurisdictions, to ask for the above qualities for an unrelated job (that is, you could ask a wine taster to be alcohol as part of the job. A developer or a show salesman, not so much, and it doesn't matter if it's on the job ad - putting it on the job ad is already icky, and in many jurisdictions illegal).
You can't ethically ask potential employees to "party and drink" for doing a job that's not related to bars and parties, whether it's software engineering or operating a crane.
The whole exchange seems to lack an understanding of the law (e.g. related to age or forcing things like drinking, or even the legality of asking for those things in the ad and/or firing someone who doesn't comply), and even why people would find it offensive and hummiliating. It's all about "but I pay and want a funny partying team", not very far from "but I pay and I want to be able to spit on the face on my employees every morning. If I put it on the job description surely they can't complain!".
Not to mention it's the legal duty to protect employees' health, and alcohol consumption is unhealthy, AND against certain religions AND destructive with certain conditions.
Might as well ask "no muslims", or "no diabetics" in your software engineering job ad.
It shouldn't be, and those companies should be sued, fined, and law-mandated out of existence, not excused.
>In japan the outside of work stuff is a requirement for every job.
And how does that work out for the family life, life-work balance, and fertility, suicide rates, and depression rates?
In some countries you can also be whipped or groped at work and nobody cares or it's even legal. Doesn't make it right either.
I still think parent is right despite overriding social mores. I believe individual has the right to 'self-select' ( and most reasonable people would at first opportunity, but there can be extenuating circumstances like, well, money ), but I also believe that once he/she is there, he/she has every right to stay in. The job may want more. The society may want more, but individual can always simply say no.
The work from home vs return office struggle is similar in nature even though it appears different on the surface.
Otherwise people are spending their time for the company's benefit, without being reimbursed.
Companies could reimburse people for team-building time, like drinks after work, but they choose not to. They want something for nothing. They want coworkers to feel like they are part of a family so they won't leave for a different job, they want to motivate people to work harder for the team, instead of hiring enough employees, etc. They want to take advantage of people's better natures in order to generate more profits for the owners.
EDIT: Some may read your comments as being in favor of being taken advantage of, part of the team or family the company advocates for, until the day you get laid off, and are no longer part of the group at happy hour or whatever.
In my experience, usually it is. But you have a point, if it isn't, I don't think it's fair.
>Doing hard drugs, as is alcohol, is not part of any legal contract.
Right but there's more to life then legal contracts. Many companies want a very close knit team. Part of this closeness comes from participating in extracurricular activities.
Look beyond the legalities. If a team expects this and you know you don't want to provide this to the team, THEN why are you choosing to work for them? Why are you insisting on using the law to protect your employment for a company that obviously doesn't want you?
Join the team that works for you. If you withdraw from all hard drugs, JOIN the company that doesn't HAVE that culture or leaves that CULTURE as OPTIONAL.
For this guy in the article he joined a team that wasn't a good fit for him. Him getting fired was correct, he never fitted in. But I will say what's likely unfair is that the "fun" part should've been part of the job description. They should've put it in there, not explicitly but implied it such that this guy knew what he was getting into.
> Look beyond the legalities
haha, yeah thats the part that I want everyone to focus on in this debate.
There's a concept of common sense. With common sense we can easily rule out jumping off of planes and into fires without getting pedantic or technical. Let's use some of this sense when talking so things don't get overly technical.
>haha, yeah thats the part that I want everyone to focus on in this debate.
Do we let laws define what's right and wrong? Or do we use common sense? Obviously it's common sense. Because laws can have loopholes and what else is it but common sense that is used to identify these loop holes? In the end that is the basis for our judgement. Law is simply a way to codify our fuzzy sense of morality into an exact logic. The problem, however, is that it is often wrong (with loop holes and tax laws and such) and we have to fall back to a fuzzy sense of what is right or wrong. AKA common sense.
Haha yeah, let's stick with common sense arguments rather then strict interpretations of the word of the law which is obviously flawed.
We expect you to drink and bond with the team. We are looking for a person who is very similar and can fit in very well socially with the team we have built.
Let me ask you, do you think what the later person did is fair?
If an employer want an employee to spend the time between 17:00 to 01:00 at a bar then they can do what the owner of the bar do, employ a person to be in that bar. If the french law is similar to other countries then they would have to pay night wages, follow maximum work hours, and follow work safety regulations. There will also be a work contract that cover those hours.
If they don't want to employ a person for this job, or they don't want to follow the law that regulate employees, then don't use employees.
For example, alcohol. Alcohol is still culturally dominant, especially in Europe. Does your take mean if you don’t want to drink, you should just keep quitting?
Drinking is culturally dominant in Europe but what's also culturally dominant is that drinking shouldn't be forced. And many companies follow this rule from a cultural standpoint.
There are many teams that have fun and allow employees to not join in on the fun. BUT there are teams where this is sort of expected. For you: join the former team not the later and have empathy to see why the later team exists.
Many companies are looking for a team with synergy which is more then just coming in, doing the work, and leaving. If you don't have this synergy, don't join. Join the company that works for you.
It's not the job of a fucking employer to expect you to drink or not drink. Except if you work at a hostess bar.
It shouldn't even be put as an option to "expect you to drink". Like employees shouldn't also "just find a job where they don't except you to laught at their sexist remarks at you" should not be an option.
>BUT there are teams where this is sort of expected.
There are also teams were sexual harassment, racism, bullying etc is expected. So?
I am explicitly talking about partying and having fun in extra curricular activities with employees. I'm saying regardless of the law, it's fair for an employer to expect this of the employee ONLY IF the employee KNEW about this expectation before joining.
I make a case for this by saying how this type of stuff does in fact benefit the team overall.
But making it an expectation for a job that has nothing to do with alcohol? Yeah no.
Alternatively: you should find a friend group that isn’t your coworkers if you want to have more selective control over who is “in” with your group.
Why not? I want my employee to fit in with the team. If they drink then I want someone who drinks. This is reasonable. There are subtle performance effects on the ENTIRE team when hiring someone too divergent.
As an employer I want my employees to all be friends. If I make this request in the job description I think that's perfectly fair. If I spring this request unknowingly onto someone who just got hired then it's unfair.
In what universe? Sorry, but only a sociopathic boss would consider this "reasonable".
In fact, if what you wrote as "reasonable" was explicitly stated as an expectation in company communications, the company could be sued out of existence, and would surely could Twitter-red out of business too, and any team manager in a larger company would be fired with the compamny trying to disassociate with it as much as possible...
My point is it is reasonable for an employer to LOOK for an employee with these characteristic qualities.
It is unreasonable for an employee to demand this behavior out of you when they didn't inform you up front that's what they hired you for.
So in other words, this kind of stuff needs to be put in the job description. It needs to be explicit. In that case it is fair.
Yeah, and I am explicitly liking it to other unacceptable things, as it itself is.
Nobody should be forced to drunk, or party, as part of "extra curricular activities with employees", or seen as a spoil-sport for not doing so, much less even considering firing him.
To see how disturbing this can go, consider employee that was once an alcoholic and wants to fully abstain fun or not, or someone having traumatic experience by having an alcoholic in their family...
To be frank, your position is beyond the pale. It's only considered because of old-school disturbing manner of thining about what a company (or team within one) should be able to expect from someone working for them.
No, I think you're misinterpreting. Let me elucidate my position in more detail.
It is fair game for the employer to be upfront about all of this stuff BEFORE the employee is hired. It needs to be in the job description. The employer wants someone who can bond and party with the team, and it is within his right to look for such a person.
It is not right for the employer to find a person who is not this person then force him to conform.
That is my stance. Looking for employees who like to drink, party and socialize with the entire team is fair game.
Obviously the man in the article was hired because the employers THOUGHT he was that person. The fact that he wasn't was miscommunication likely from both parties. Regardless of the law he doesn't fit in with the team at all. Getting fired is bound to happen.
Just look for a different company!?
Most people don't have multiple job offers lined up, which is why it's important that employees have some protection.
And it's usually for the best of everyone. Even if you enjoy the social activities of your job, at some point you might decide not to go drinking every week, and you shouldn't be fired for that.
Should men be hired as wet nurses and midwives? I think the answer is No. At certain times it's not appropriate.
But that's besides the point. Let's not get into this because it's a flamewar topic.
>Most people don't have multiple job offers lined up, which is why it's important that employees have some protection.
I agree. Put it this way. I think it's fair game for the employee to HAVE this protection if he didn't know it's part of job.
But if he knew, and he's taking advantage of this protection then it's not fair game.
>And it's usually for the best of everyone. Even if you enjoy the social activities of your job, at some point you might decide not to go drinking every week, and you shouldn't be fired for that.
I think it's quite obvious if you read between the lines that he's not fired for not drinking. He's fired because he didn't fit in and doesn't get along with the team.
Nobody fires someone just because they didn't drink but is a cool guy to get along with. Basically what's going on now is a lot of people don't like him, and people are forced to work with him.
And I think it shouldn't be. Companies should be about work and professionalism, not culture and other touch feely BS.
At best, a cultural fit that would disqualify one is if they're a pacifict and the company makes weapons, or something similar.
Not if they don't like BS company mandated non-work activities, bro-style interaction, political partisanship forced upon employees, alcohol-fueld bonding, or "we overwork employees 24/7 because they are starry-eyed idiots fresh out of college with no personal life, and you should work like that too", and so on.
Professionalism is an artificial construct. Throughout most of human history people operated as tribes and social groups. All the touchy and feely BS was inevitable.
Given that it's part of our biological and anthropological nature you literally cannot expect no team to be formed this way at all. Many teams want this level of synergy and because it is a natural part of our history and biology it is inevitable that many teams will be formed this way REGARDLESS of the law.
Learn to identify these teams and join the team that fits you. I think it is completely wrong to forcefully embed yourself in a team where you don't fit in and use the law to help you remain on this team and enforce your idea of professionalism. You will literally destroy the spirit of the team.
Under our current culture and law there will definitely be teams that value what you value. And that is where you fit in and that is the company you should join. But have understanding and empathy to see why this "bro-style" interaction and "alcohol fueled" bonding is necessary in other teams.
Most things are.
Why is it a requirement to join any team at all, which also happens to be an artificial construct?
>Why is it a requirement to join any team at all, which also happens to be an artificial construct?
It is not a requirement to join a team at all. You can join no team, and that is your choice. Likely though you will want to join a team to survive. In the past humans survived in groups. A human that is not part of a tribe likely had a low chance of survival.
Nowadays you need to join a team to get a salary. But nowadays you have an extra option. You can join something called a "professional" team which is a team that separates your personal life from your "professional" one. However the traditional concept of a "team" still exists and you can choose not to join such a team if choose not to.
I ask though that you have the wisdom to see why the concept of the "traditional team" still exists and why such teams are still effective in our society.
Think about it this way. Team bonding activities still exist. They exist for a reason and that reason is because the company that created that activity WANTS you to join it. The requirement is still there.
It is not unreasonable to see how some teams WANT these traditional bonding activities more then other teams. It all depends on the dynamics and for you to force the team to abide by your dynamics of "professionalism" is wrong. You have options, JOIN the team that works.
<< The concept of Teams are not a an artificial construct. They are part of biology both inside and outside of human biology.
We might be getting a little esoteric here. If "Teams" is a concept then just from that name alone you can determine that it refers to an idea ( artificial construct ). And biology does not automatically wills teams into existence ( although it might happen to result in them as our environment seems to indicate ). Do you mean evolution?
<< Why is it a requirement to join any team at all, >> It is not a requirement to join a team at all. >> Nowadays you need to join a team to get a salary.
So it is a requirement?
<< Think about it this way. Team bonding activities still exist.
I think that is a really bad argument. Slavery still exists ( sadly ) and I would not even dream of thinking considering recommending it.
<< They exist for a reason and that reason
Yep, and now we evolved into something better. Could we move onto Team 2.0 so to speak?
<< It is not unreasonable to see how some teams WANT these traditional
I guess it depends. Some traditions are more upsetting than others. Would you advocate for a team that wants to continue a tradition of child sacrifice?
edit: removed specific god reference. it is not necessary for the argument to work
No, team is a name for a concept that exist outside of just an idea. Animals display team like behavior in things we term as "herds" or "flocks". Team is simply a name for cooperation or group behavior.
It is a biological concept for two reasons. First it exists in animals. Animals tend not to have culture or learned behavior. Most animals form social groups (aka teams) naturally with minimal culture indicating that a "team" is not an idea but that it is hard wired behavior within their brains.
The second reason is that humans are heavily influenced by cultures and ideas. A huge portion of our behavior across continents and peoples is divergent and different indicating that the behavior is "learned" or "created" out of ideas. The thing with teams is that it is a quality that is universal across cultures and peoples. There is no divergence. There is no culture that doesn't understand the concept of cooperation or teams. This makes it highly highly likely that the concept of a "team" is biological. It is behavior hardwired into our brain in the same way that pain or hunger is hardwired into our brains. All humans form teams, all humans get hungry.
The one difference here is that hunger forms a somewhat distinct sensation separate from consciousness in our brains so we can easily tell that "hunger" is distinct. Team building and forming is however woven directly into our consciousness so it's harder to see the separation between "learned" and "inborn". The outside evidence, however, points to biology as the origin. All cultures form teams and cooperate. All cultures get hungry.
>So it is a requirement?
No it's not a requirement.
>I think that is a really bad argument. Slavery still exists ( sadly ) and I would not even dream of thinking considering recommending it.
For THAT specific comment I am saying that team bonding activities exist for a reason. A purpose. That is VALID supporting evidence for my point.
You are conflating that point with Morality which is completely separate. For example there's plenty of examples of wars and conflicts between people who didn't bond well. People have died because of failure of team bonding. Therefore team bonding should be a requirement. Is that valid? No. The truth is much more complex.
That being said Team bonding has it's place. There is reasoning for why it exists and conflating it with slavery is really taking it too far. We both know the importance of team bonding. If you're not bonding with your team at work, then you're focusing your time on a different team outside of work. You value team bonding. Likely it is your family. Should I conflate this with slavery? Is that a reasonable tangent? No.
>Yep, and now we evolved into something better. Could we move onto Team 2.0 so to speak?
I would say we didn't. We have no idea whether it's team 2.0 or a regression. You have no evidence for this either way. I would say that the current configuration of "professional teams" just fits your current work style and life. It works for you, so you like to think it's "team 2.0" when really we need data to know either way.
>I guess it depends. Some traditions are more upsetting than others. Would you advocate for a team that wants to continue a tradition of child sacrifice?
This is taking it too far. Let me reword this in a way that makes more sense and still conveys your point without being ludicrous. The restaurant Hooters exclusively hires employees based off the tradition of breast size and lacking a penis. Do I advocate that?
Yes I do. Each team has different requirements, short of child sacrifice I think a requirement like being similar to the team and enjoying team bonding activities is NOT unreasonable.
IMO that is a valid metric to hire someone.
What fun, eh?
You're speaking from towers of huge privilege with mininal compassion. If you think what you're forcing people working for you to do - or lose their job - is bonding, think again.
Thus you are the one speaking from a place a minimal compassion. Think on that.
Let me put more emphasis on what I thought was implied but didn't get through. I think these things need to be part of a job description.
If the expectation is MADE clear to the employee before he is hired, then it's fair game. He volunteered for this stuff. I am not advocating forcing this stuff onto people who didn't know about it.
The problem is etiquette. It's sort of not good to put this in the job description officially so employers need to somehow subtly convey this employees that this is what will be expected.
You might be surprised, but even if not, using the "less privileged" card from a position of someone in power enforcing illegal and unethical mandates on potential and existing employees is not the best application for it.
>The problem is etiquette. It's sort of not good to put this in the job description officially so employers need to somehow subtly convey this employees that this is what will be expected.
No, the problem with doing something illegal (that you can't explicitly put in the job description even) AND douchey is that it's illegal and douchey.
"How you'd do this bullying coercion subtly so you get what you want and screw the employees" is not a real problem.
It's not a card. I don't even care to reveal it. I revealed it ONLY because someone decided to use identity politics against me for no goddamn reason.
And here you are turning it around again. Let's just stop with this vile nonsense.
>No, the problem with doing something illegal (that you can't explicitly put in the job description even) AND douchey is that it's illegal and douchey.
Do not fucking insult me. Calling me douchey is fucking rude and against the rules here. Either speak to me respectfully or don't speak here at all.
I mean, i don't drink anymore, and i avoid having sex with people i work with at all cost nowadays. Why is the alcohol more part of the team culture than promiscuity?
To be completely honest, i think promiscuity (even when not helped by alcohol) is a better team-builder than alcohol. I mean, most of us have been students, i expect the US to have a more involved punk and hippie culture than my country (and in my country, sex was pretty much expected in these circle when i was a student) and if i read the "frat" stories right, you don't even have to be a fringe leftist to use sex as a team-building tool, it seems to be more mainstream.
I also have been a youth camp counselor, and been with coastguards during summertime, those are at least two job where promiscuity is expected (you don't HAVE to partake, and you won't be fired if you don't), and i built stronger friendships there than at my first CS internship where the only teambuilding tool was alcohol (and food).
Let's say there weren't any moral hang ups and people readily put this thing in job descriptions. If you refused when offered then it's fair game if you're fired.
I have no exact answer here, but I do empathize with your angle.
E.g. previous company was full of young, attractive, single people and they loved to go out together. Fine, but I shouldn't be dinged for being older, married, and not very attractive and not being comfortable with bars and hot tubs. (Especially when any sort of friendliness towards young women is lasered in on, and not worth the professional risk)
Let me put it this way. If the job description expects it to be out of office and YOU chose to work for THAT job, then it's fair game to fire you should you choose not to live up to the spirit of the description.
But it shouldn't be forced upon you if it's not part of the job description.
Overall though I don't think it's much of a problem. Most companies are, like you said, they leave the participation to be optional and everyone is cool with it.