Now this is being a fan. http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/...earing-Green-Bay-Packers-tie-012511?gt1=39002 Car salesman sacked over Packers tie A salesman at a Chevy Dealership in suburban Chicago was fired Monday for refusing to take off his Green Bay Packers tie, the Chicago Sun-Times reported. John Stone wore the tie to work at Webb Chevrolet in Oak Lawn, Ill., to celebrate the Packers’ NFC Championship Game win over the Bears. General Manager Jerry Roberts asked Stone to remove the tie five times, saying it might aggravate Bears fans and make it more difficult to sell cars. When Stone refused, he was fired. “He said, ‘You have two options,’” a furious Stone said later Monday to the Chicago Sun-Times. “Remove the tie, or you’re fired.” “When I didn’t, he said, ‘You can leave, you’re fired.’ Does that sound fair to you?” Stone, a 34-year-old father of two who had worked at the dealership for a month and a half, said he has been a Packer fan for about a decade. “I was just showing my love for my team and it was a nice, smart tie that matched my clothes — none of the customers minded: they had a sense of humor about it,” Stone told the Chicago Sun-Times. Roberts defended the firing by saying that the Packers tie would have "salted the wounds" of Bears fans. Roberts said the dealership spends $20,000 a month in radio advertising with the Bears, including a "Most Valuable Bear” award handed out after each game. “If he loves the tie more than his job, he’s welcome to keep wearing it — elsewhere,” Roberts said.
I know it's early in the year, but I think we can all come to a consensus and go ahead and give this guy Father of the Year.
All I can think when I read this is this is a lawsuit waiting to happen. I like the guy standing up for that, I mean if he was from head to toe in Packers gear that is one thing, but just a tie should not matter.
Just saw PTI and this guy said/lied he was paying homage to his dead grandmother who was a Packer fan... smh... I think this guy was asking to be fired or Hit. At least he will get a nice settlement for wrongful termination. When keeping it real goes wrong.
I support employers being able to fire employees for whatever reason they please, even ones as stupid as this.
Agree. But I think this was a really dumb business decision. The manager comes across looking like an idiot. I doubt any of his other employees are feeling really good right now. And he may very well be facing a lawsuit.
I think the employer even has legal ground here. If the employee was wearing clothing that was offensive to customers and harmful to business, then he should have the right to terminate based on willful conduct detrimental to the company and insubordination. There is no class-based discrimination here, so there is no automatic recourse. How is this different from an employee wearing a T-shirt that says "**** the police" to a professional sales presentation involving law enforcement customers?
I am on the "fire that idiot" side. when you have youre own dealership and your own employees you can make them wear whatever you want. take off the tie. he was warned several times.
Lawsuit? No way. Packers tie in Chicago? Drives customers away. Perfectly fine to get rid of the guy for that.
To be fair, the guy doing the firing was the GM, not the owner. If I owned the dealership, I would now fire the GM for seriously lacking people management skills and being generally incompetent. At the very most, I would have sent him home like DonnyMost suggested. But even that seems excessive. There's no evidence that this actually bothered anyone except the manager - he even admitted that no customers complained. Would they at some point? I don't know - I think it's a bit silly to think that someone is going to make a decision to not buy a car based on the fact that their salesman is wearing a Packers tie, but who knows.
I wonder how many times this has happened in Indy when people refuse to take of their Texans tie.... NEVER! Thanks Kubiak.
What about the fact that the employee was being insubordinant?? At the end of the day, the GM is/was his BOSS. If your boss tells you to do something 5 TIMES, I'm expecting his patience to run really, really thin on the 6th time. Regardless of whether customers ACTUALLY cared about the tie, if his boss felt like it would offend even ONE person, he is obligated to take it off if he is asked. The GM isn't the one who needs to justify his actions here.....
You don't have freedom to wear whatever you want to work. You are representing your company, if that company is a financial supporter of the Bears and you are making management worry about sales they have every right to fire him, especially after warning him 5 times. You tell someone something 5 times and they ignore you you had better be fired.
Depends on if it was a reasonable request. A boss' job is to lead, not to just give orders. There are plenty of steps you can take that don't including simply firing a guy. A good GM would know how to differentiate between an offense worth firing someone over and an offense where other steps are acceptable. He failed at that basic task. If I'm the owner, he absolutely does. If my GM's actions created other unhappy employees, then that affects my business negatively. If he generates negative publicity through his actions, then that affects my business negatively.
I would have sent the guy home after the first time he refused to follow my directive. Especially a guy thats only been there 6 weeks. The employee was completely in the wrong to not listen to his boss. If the request that he removed his tie bothers him, he could just as easily quit. You do not ignore your superior multiple times and expect to go far.
