Flip Side

If I were a business owner...

I don't want my employees free-speechin' when they should be workin'.

While they're being paid, it's MY interests they're supposed to be dedicated towards; not their own.

It's one of the reasons they're being paid, after all.

I watched a business get put out of business because it hired someone as a welder right out of welding school.

They'd done it before without problems, what was different about this?

The newest welder was a special snowflake who didn't know that welders cussed to a degree that made sailors request the language be toned down a mite.

The newest welder was always in the offices complaining about their co-worker's language and, it seemed, rarely out on the shop floor welding.

Because they didn't do much welding, they never learned more than they'd got from school.

Because of the language complaints to HR and the PC hammer coming down on it, the most experienced welders, literally, said, "fuck this!" and moved on.  To the point where there was not a single welder with the knowledge to weld up the pressure vessels which were the high-margin keep the doors open product the business used to get through seasonal variations in orders.

Can't sell a pressure tank that fails inspection.

Special Snowflake's complaints and HR policy had also given the place a reputation as someplace a welder didn't want to work, so they couldn't hire someone who could do the pressure welds.

Less than a year after Snowflake was hired, the 60 year old local company was sold to a 5 year old national concern.  For its patents and sales network.  Not for its manufacturing.

To me it's especially galling that there's a stated right to speech, and no stated right to be protected from being offended by someone's speech.

We're running it backwards.

If the shop cusses, and you tell new-hires there's cussing, then it's part of the job; if you accept the position you're accepting exposure to the cussing.  Yes, I am saying the ruling on "shop rules" was wrongly decided.