Say "Mitt doesn't like women," get fired from your job?

This month the Business Record ran a piece asking metro honchos how they would respond to learning an employee made a scandalous post on a personal blog. It is dramatically titled, "When Worlds Collide".

The article prompts a group of businessmen and Internet professionals with a scandalous hypothetical entry reading, “It is clear that Mitt Romney hates women". They are asked how to handle the situation.

Talking bad about Mitt is enough to get you fired, in the eyes of Iowa State Internet Professor Anthony Townsend:

If […] somebody shows up for work and while they’re at work they have a campaign button on, or a religious emblem, and the company doesn’t like it. They don’t have to let them have that kind of stuff.

In my opinion, the blog the person writes is the same as showing up for work with a t-shirt or a button or some sort of position statement. I don’t know if they could tell them to take the blog down, (but could tell them to) take it down under pain of dismissal.

Good thing he doesn't actually run a company. The two businessmen are smart enough to know it's not worth their time to make much fuss over, but they say that in a profoundly stiff and robotically-analytical way:

Welshhons: [You] have to go through a series of questions to determine if this behavior is something you can either discipline or terminate the employee for.

The questions should be:

Is the conduct protected under law?
What is the relationship between the off-duty conduct and the job performance?
And does the conduct have the potential to harm the company, and how and why?

It’s going to be the employer’s responsibility to prove how this conduct impacted the job. If I were advising somebody, I would not advise them to take action against the employee. It doesn’t appear to be anything -- as long as you’re leaving the company name out of it -- disparaging against the company, disparaging against co-workers. It’s not taking place during company time. It’s a blog that is not a company blog.

I know these aren't crazy-wild responses, but they're so cold and completely lacking of empathy for employees that it makes me shiver a little.

Should the dude who runs this tumblr be afraid for his corporate job because he reposted a Freud quote?

Except for Brett J. Trout, who seems to understand that people are people and maybe employers should just hire good people and not be a megaconglomerate.

Trout: You have to keep two things in mind: Is it legal? And how is it going to be perceived? […] But the thing is, I think it’d be very bad for a company to put in their policy that you can’t make political statements. On something like this, I would say completely leave it alone. It just reflects poorly on the employee and it reflects poorly on the employer, but I don’t think it rises to the level that you want to fire them for.

the rest of the article is fine. Blah. It just depresses me to think of anyone becoming this type of employer. WHO IS NEXT?

/end rant for the morning.