Nesrie
1815
Yeah, she made a mistake. Hopefully you make one one day so someone can squish you into the ground for life. Sounds like a totally healthy response.
I have made plenty of mistakes in my 35 year career. I have never called a customer a bigot in public even while given cause. There are mistakes and there are mistakes that get you fired. This easily falls into the latter category. She did this to herself. Stop painting the aggressor as the victim. The only reason that this might impact her later is because she has shown an unwillingness to learn from this. She is a walking liability for any hiring manager.
However, if you prefer I could attribute your vitriolic and aggressive comment as something completely due to my minority status. Why else would you wish that my career and life be ruined due to a mistake?
Nesrie
1817
Go for it. Your 35 years will surely get you through this hardship.
That’s kind of a shitty thing to say.
So now responding to a Twitter post is “out of left field”? How ludicrous is that? You make it sound like Deroir showed up in the middle of the night, knocked on her door and starting explaining why her inferior female brain could not understand why she was wrong. She posted something on social media. Do I need to explain the term social media? He responded respectfully and politely and she jumped his shit for it.
Stop trying to explain bigotry to me. I have known it is a problem in the workplace (school, religions, communities, etc.) probably longer than most posters on this board have been alive.
You can talk about all the articles or examples in the world but it still does not matter. IT DOES NOT JUSTIFY HER ACTIONS. You do not get a Get Out Of Jail Free card because you are a minority in race, religion or gender. In fact it is the exact opposite. You must be even more careful because no one reacts well to false accusations of bigotry. That is the world we live in and frankly I am grateful for it. I do not want the power to accuse someone falsely of bigotry and get away with it because I am some sort of lowly oppressed minority. That is just as degrading to me as being subjected to bigotry in the first place. It is simply another form of it.
Nesrie
1820
If anyone is racing to the bottom, you are. You refuse to believe that someone can honestly take this kind of out of left field advice as aggressive and therefore respond to it defensively. It’s a known problem, actually. Then you confirm you know this but then try to discount it because others have it hard too.
You don’t have to agree but don’t pretend like it’s a not a known problem when it is. It’s a very well known problem. In fact it’s been a handful of months, we’re probably due for a new article about it.
Fwiw I agree with you, so dont feel like you are crazy and alone here :) I am surprised at how many respected fellow colleagues and posters are on the other side of this. It gives me pause to think further perhaps I am missing something. But its fine to have those disagreements.
Less so the lack of compassion towards the victim of her sexist slurs here, Derior.
This guy has done nothing wrong but is having his reputation and social media messages examined for the whiff of gamergateism (the post Dave linked even implies such a connection) and his name being dragged through the mud. It is incredibly unfair and unwarranted.
He was just unfairly painted as being a misogynist. Why should anyone care about that?
I am having a very difficult time understanding the point of our fellow colleagues and posters because they seem to spread over three approaches.
(1) That somehow her reaction was justified because Derior’s comment was sexist or could easily be construed as such.
(2) The somehow her reaction was justified because that is the way she perceived Derior’s comments, even if her reaction was entirely unreasonable because there is nothing in his comment to make such a conclusion.
(3) That somehow she gets a free pass to perform these actions because the industry has issues with race and gender.
Of course, the responses to each are as follows:
(1) This is the least supportable of the three as there is zero justification or backup of this position. No one has shown any intended or even reasonably perceived malice in his comments.
(2) This is the most frighting of the three because it, in essence, allows any minority to accuse anyone of bigotry because we perceive it to be true even if it is not. Given the social stigma of being labeled a bigot and the effect of shutting any discourse down once someone is effectively labeled as such, this is has a chilling implication on any reasonable discussion. Unjustly accusing people at will of wanton bigotry without support is counterproductive in the long term and will result in nothing more than resentment and hatred.
(3) This is probably the most insulting to me. Excusing my discourteous actions because I am a minority and subject to bigotry in my industry is simply another form of bigotry. It means that you expect less of me and that I can not cope because it is too difficult in my chosen profession. What a bunch of horseshit.
If I screw up I expect to be treated equally. If I unfairly call a customer a bigot, I expect to be treated similarly as if someone called me a sand nigger. Both offenses deserve termination.
Nesrie
1823
I don’t think I’ve seen that here. I even mentioned Derior seems to have vanished, and that’s unfair to him. He shouldn’t have to hide or avoid this and if people are digging around or internet mobbing him, that’s not okay either.
Thats fair, we cool, more broadly the twitter/facebook/gamasutra developer community at large things as it were though… yeah its rather one sided.
Nesrie
1825
Not sure anyone said it was justified, just explainable. If it was justified, it wouldn’t be labeled as a mistake as often as it is. No one is giving her a free pass… see the mistake piece. I think you think everyone who does not agree with you is “taking her side”… which is literally not happening.
I hear ya! I agree! I also think a lot of the eloquent defences of Price out there would be better served elsewhere because in Price’s case she was simply in the wrong. Dont put good argument in defence of a bad cause.
You are not explaining her actions. You are excusing them. There is a very significant difference.
A very large part of your defense seems to be that since she is in a misogynist industry she is allowed to act poorly or not to be treated as harshly when she does. This is far more insulting to women than most anything else you could post. If someone insinuated that they expected less of me because I am a minority in a difficult industry I would be even more offended than if you actually called me a bigoted term. After all, Jackie Robinson was not given an excuse to hit .200 by Branch Rickey because he was black.
Nesrie
1829
That’s how you are reading it, but that’s not what I am doing. I am explaining why someone might be defensive in a certain scenario.
Most people who are “taking her side” seem to be saying she did something bad, but it was not something that she should have been fired over. Post gamergate, I think many people are wary of companies ceding their personnel decisions to angry Internet mobs, which is what this looks like.
This could have been handled better by everyone involved.
So you believe that someone should be able to publicly unfairly call a prominent customer a bigot and not be terminated over it? That is an interesting perspective. However, I do not think I will step foot in the conference room tomorrow, immediately call my customer a racist and see how it all shakes out. I would give my over / under on my length of employment about 4 hours after that.
It does not look like ArenaNet ceded their HR responsibilities to an internet mob. Some only want it to look that way because it helps their narrative. It appears to me that ArenaNet saw an egregious social media error by one of their employees and terminated them for it. The angry internet mob has nothing to do with her termination beyond bringing visibility to it, much like the angry internet mob did nothing but bring Justine Sacco’s “Going to Africa. Hope I don’t get AIDS. Just kidding. I’m white!” tweet to the masses. The tweets themselves were what was actionable, not the visibility they were given.
I don’t agree with your characterization of Price’s tweets, which is why we are at an impasse. I also don’t think that what she did was the equivalent of walking into a conference room and calling a customer a racist.
Correct, it’s more like calling a customer an asshat and sexist to the entire world not just a conference room. And then doubling down on it when it should be obvious to her she may have overreacted a bit. But I don’t think she said anything about him being racist.
Social media is different from a conference room. Treating a comment on social media as equivalent to one made in a conference room is bizarre to me.
Blah, long response that went no where so I deleted it. Anyway, from what I’ve seen (Eurogamer link) of her reaction to an innocuous response was way over the top and not ‘private’ as she claimed and was fire-able on its face for a customer facing (in this case she chose to be) employee.
And she may have come upon her anger/annoyance with customers honestly due to dealing with crap, but she still appears to have let her anger cloud her judgement to the point I can’t see how she couldn’t be fired.
But I’ve been wrong before an could be here.
