Tuesday, May 12, 2020

Coronavirus Update 5-12-2020: You have every right to be a 𝘤𝘰𝘷𝘪𝘥𝘪𝘰𝘵, and we have every right to fire you for it


"Covidiot: A person who acts like an irresponsible idiot during the Covid-19 pandemic, ignoring common sense, decency, science, and professional advice leading to the further spread of the virus and needless deaths of thousands."

A Dallas law firm has terminated the employment of a document services manager after it discovered his threatening, offensive, racist, and very public Facebook post taking issue with mandatory face masks.


"No more masks. Any business that tells me to put on a mask (Whole Foods on Lomo Alto) in Dallas will get told to kiss my Corona ass and will lose my business forever. It's time to stop this BULLSHIT. Do I have to show the lame security guard outside of a ghetto store my CV19 test results? I will show him my Glock 21 shooting range results. With Hornady hollow points. Pricey ammo, but worth it in this situation. They have reached the limit. I have more power than they do.....they just don't know it yet."

Bain's post, which any reasonable person would interpret as just plain wrong, resulted in his termination. As my friend Eric Meyer pointed out yesterday (borrowing from a comment on the Facebook page of Bain's former employer): "Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom from consequences for that speech." 

In other words, you have the right to your opinion, no matter how offensive. But once you share that opinion publicly, we have the right to fire you for it … coronavirus or no coronavirus. COVID-19 might have temporarily upended our world, but just cause for termination is still just cause for termination. So please don't be a covidiot. Employers don't like firing people under the best of circumstances. We especially don't like doing so now. But we will if we have to.