Seattle software firm Outreach.io employee fired for not liking bodegas | Hacker News Reader

Seattle software firm Outreach.io employee fired for not liking bodegas

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31 pointssergiotapia33 comments

He's complaining that everything that was located in his apple maps as a grocery store was a corner store that didn't sell actual groceries but some packaged food and junk food. He gats fired for satirizing Apple maps basically but they take it as insulting the corner stores --and even if he were, so what?

What kind of BS world do we live in where bosses give a shit what you think of the grocery store or corner store down the block?

> What kind of BS world do we live in where bosses give a shit what you think of the grocery store or corner store down the block?

they don't care about that. they do care if you go on social media and make an ass of yourself by mocking people who are less fortunate, damaging the hard work of everyone else in the company by sullying its brand.

Who knew who this person was? This person wasn't the CEO or the head of PR. In this case it looks like they are listening for trees falling in a forest.

Everyone is an arse at one time or another. Just have to put them in the wrong circumstance --late for an important appointment, refuse to treat them extraordinarily when they are trying to impress other people, do something that is ordinary but goes against their current thought leadership, etc.

They should go ahead fire the whole company for they know everyone will be an arse some time in their lives.

> Everyone is an arse at one time or another.

sure, but publishing with hopes of going viral is a different animal altogether.

it was extremely poor judgement on the part of the employee that once again endangered everyone else's hard work.

assuming he doesn't go too viral, hopefully it will just be a lesson.

Oh, I agree it's juvenile. But it's not a reason to fire someone. Its also juvenile to drive drunk (this has the potential of resulting in injury and death of others). It's juvenile to curse someone out.

This is not a good reason to fire someone. If we were to trawl TikTok, we would come up with a good amount of people to fire from many companies, if we go by this criterion.

Where is the "restorative justice" people in these circles usually clamor for?

Where is HR? Aren't they supposed to correct behavior when it veers?

Many states are Work at Will - a company can fire you for any reason or no reason at all. If you live in such a state then use social media at your own risk.

True, it doesn't mean they're beyond criticism for having a happy trigger finger.

That's certainly true, too. Sometimes employers use these actions to "virtue signal" the kinds of employees they don't want to apply, whereas they may run afoul of federal law were they to outright ban them.

if you willfully and ostentatiously engage in behavior that endangers the commercial success of your employer either through poor judgement, sheer incompetence or active malice, you have clearly stepped into "good reason to be fired" territory.

This guy isn't "sullying the brand" of anyone, he's complaining about living in a food desert in one of the richest cities in the world.

You have to be a certified idiot to think he's mocking the people patronizing or working at these bodegas.

Except he was mocking Apple Maps for not knowing a bodega is not a grocery store, even if a user calls it that.

Outreach doesn't explicitly state the reason he was terminated. There are a number of tweets suggesting it wasn't the bodegas video. It's certainly not a good look, but this title is jumping to conclusions.

> He is no longer an employee of Outreach.

It's a direct reply to the tweet. Not enough?

A direct reply to which tweet? The tweet which Outreach replied to is not visible "because the account owner limits who can view their tweets".

Guy basically pointed out he lives in a food desert, which is a serious health issue for many urban communities.

Yup.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Food_desert

> A food desert is an area that has limited access to affordable and nutritious food.

I really seems like this is about to become a pile-on against a company's actions based on a single tweet, showing one side of a story.

Even half-way through that one video he makes a comment/accent that (while I have really no context around) feels like a racial mockery, and some cursory reading shows that the same account had other posts (homophobic context, "buying NAACP shirt so these people [Black people] vibe with me more", etc).

Is firing someone too far? Perhaps. But this really doesn't seem like someone getting fired for a comment about bodegas.

Dude definitely didn't deserve to get fired for that.

Unless they fired him for being too stupid to locate a real grocery store in New York City lol

I think I'm missing all of the context. Who is this person? How do we know he was fired (or worked for the company)? All we have here is a video of someone talking to camera and no other information. And yes, I did search, and the only results I found were right here on HN.

The company literally confirmed he got fired on twitter if you look at the thread.

I haven't found it yet, but Twitter only shows me two or three replies at a time. Seems like this post should have just linked to that.

We live in a time where a Twitter account with <100 users can complain and get a person fired from their job.

This is sad and it looks really bad on Outreach.

Well... The account didnt get someone fired. The video the person posted online did. Someone just brought it to their attention and it seems like they were a pretty junior employee that was easy to lose.

What kind of dark world do we live in where you can get fired for posting a video that benign? This is outrageous.

Meanwhile publications love calling White culture ugly. Shows you who the real racists are.

Yikes. He clearly got fires for the "Ock / let me get it the Ocky" way comment. Not for not liking bodegas.

I'm not saying the firing was deserved. Just that the headline is clearly misleading.

General Ock is the name of the cook that makes food-porn sandwiches. There’s nothing racist about it.

Okay. So you can say there is nothing wrong with that one. But someone pointed outreach to this persons tik tok profile. Which includes that video and more. Including one where he says he bought a naacp shirt so he can fit in better with "those people" at his gym in the bronx.

https://twitter.com/DNetxy/status/1541568953805406209

It's very likely that there are more racially insensitive, at best, videos which would lead to some action, like termination, taking place. It's very naive to pretend like there is absolutely nothing wrong with this persons behavior and that they were fired for not liking bodegas.

there is nothing wrong with that behavior, no one was hurt, or even close to hurt.

this is ridiculous.

what does auk/auky mean?

The bit in the video where he says its like those tik toks where people say hey Ock let me get an egg sandwich the Ocky way is him using an accent while describing tik toks where people yell at middle eastern people in bodegas to make them a sandwich, "their way".

In 2022 its racially insensitive enough to be offensive to a lot of people. That is why they got in trouble. That and their other, worse, tik toks. Not for saying they couldnt find a grocery store.

For referance: https://nypost.com/2021/10/22/nyc-bodega-gets-tiktok-famous-...

Yeah... It's pretty clear they looked at his tik tok and the racial comments are why he got fired...

https://twitter.com/DNetxy/status/1541568953805406209

Bought an NAAPC shirt so he could fit in with, "Those people" at his gym in the Bronx better.

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