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Oh Florida: workers fired for wearing orange
Were they wearing orange shirts on Friday to protest management? Or to get psyched for happy hour?
Either way, orange-shirted workers no longer have jobs at the Deerfield Beach law firm of Elizabeth R. Wellborn P.A.
A spokeswoman said the law firm had "no comment at this time."
Four workers tell the story this way: For the past few months, some employees have worn orange shirts on pay-day Fridays so they'd look like a group when they went out for happy hour.
This Friday, 14 workers wearing orange shirts were called into a conference room, where an executive said he understood there was a protest involving orange, the employees were wearing orange, and they all were fired.
The executive said anyone wearing orange for an innocent reason should speak up. One employee immediately denied involvement with a protest and explained the happy-hour color.
The executives conferred outside the room, returned and upheld the decision: all fired, said Lou Erik Ambert, 31, of Coconut Creek, a litigation para-legal who said he was terminated.
"There is no office policy against wearing orange shirts. We had no warning. We got no severance, no package, no nothing," said Ambert. "I feel so violated."
Meloney McLeod, 39, of North Lauderdale, said her choice of shirt puts her in a tough spot: "I'm a single mom with four kids, and I'm out of a job just because I wore orange today."
Janice Doble, 50, of Sunrise,said she wore orange Friday because she was looking forward to happy hour with colleagues after a busy work week.
"Orange happens to be my favorite color. My patio is orange," said Doble. "My lipstick was orange today." She said she supervised 12 people who scanned, copied and mailed documents for the firm.
Now she's worried for relatives employed at the law firm. "I have four kids who work there," said Doble. "I don't want them to retaliate and fire my kids."
Yadel Fong, 21, of Miami, wonders where he'll find work after losing his job in the mail room. He was not aware of anyone in the group involved in a protest.
"To my mind, protesting is where you put your foot down, and you're not working. There was none of that today," said Fong, who said he was working and looking forward to happy hour.
Florida is an "at-will" state for employment. That means unless there's a contract, an employer can fire a worker "for a good reason, for a bad reason or even for the wrong reason, as long as it's not an unlawful reason," said Eric K. Gabrielle, a labor and employment lawyer at Stearns Weaver in Fort Lauderdale.
"No violation of the law jumps out" in this case, Gabrielle said.
Re: Oh Florida: workers fired for wearing orange
DD #1 passed away in January 2011 at 14 days old due to congenital heart disease
DD#2 lost in January 2012 at 23 weeks due to anhydramnios caused by a placental abruption
I was so ready for the wearing of orange shirts to be in protest of St. Patrick's day (the orange being the color of the Irish Protestants, while the green is for the Catholics).
I was all ready to make a discrimination based on religion argument.
... but instead it was all about stupidity and employment at will and wanting to be matchy-matchy at happy hour and paranoid law firm bosses.
I am the 99%.
Even for FL, this seems a little out there.
my read shelf:
I've learned never to underestimate stupidity, especially when coupled with paranoia.
Many employers are in the "oh, the job market is crappy, so we can replace anybody any time" modality right now... forgetting that it costs time (which costs money) to get people hired and ramped up.
I've seen just as blatant exercises of stupidity (and raw power). Honestly, it's not always the case that "something else is going on". Sometimes, people just be crazy.
I am the 99%.
There's a video interview with one of the employees with this article. There was new management, and according to the employee one of the HR people (wife of the manager who fired them) had a "complex", spray-tanned, and was orange. Management is claiming the group wearing orange were doing it to spite her, the employees claim they had been wearing it for pay day long before it.
IDK. If the employees were doing it before the new management started, then obviously the two are unrelated. The employee on the video's contempt of the the woman is pretty apparent, though, so who knows.
http://www.sun-sentinel.com/business/fl-elizabeth-wellborn-orange-firing-20120316,0,486402.story
Yes, something else was going on. The paranoia and stupidity that was mentioned earlier.
According to all of the articles I've seen, the employees had been wearing orange on Fridays for months now - this new manager (with the orange wife) didn't start until March 2nd.
I can see the employees MAYBE making a connection between the shirts they were already wearing and the manager's wife's tanning color, but firing fourteen people over an overheard giggled, "dude, our shirts are the same color as X's wife - teehee" is the height of paranoia and stupidity.
"You don't get to be all puke-face about your kid shooting your undead baby daddy when all you had to do was KEEP HIM IN THE FLUCKING HOUSE, LORI!" - doctorwho
Perhaps, although we are missing at least half the story here. From what we know, the manager was new and apparently there was a personality dispute between the workers and his wife. Terminations based upon personality conflicts are not necessarily stupid or paranoid, as such conflicts can be toxic in a work environment. It doesn't mean it was the best decision, or even a good one, but it goes beyond making a decision based solely upon having had a lousy breakfast, which essentially is what I was reacting to with my initial comment above.