Comment by deltaseventhree | Hacker News Reader

Comment by deltaseventhree | Hacker News Reader

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deltaseventhree

You made edits, so I will address those:

>Doing hard drugs, as is alcohol, is not part of any legal contract.

Right but there's more to life then legal contracts. Many companies want a very close knit team. Part of this closeness comes from participating in extracurricular activities.

Look beyond the legalities. If a team expects this and you know you don't want to provide this to the team, THEN why are you choosing to work for them? Why are you insisting on using the law to protect your employment for a company that obviously doesn't want you?

Join the team that works for you. If you withdraw from all hard drugs, JOIN the company that doesn't HAVE that culture or leaves that CULTURE as OPTIONAL.

For this guy in the article he joined a team that wasn't a good fit for him. Him getting fired was correct, he never fitted in. But I will say what's likely unfair is that the "fun" part should've been part of the job description. They should've put it in there, not explicitly but implied it such that this guy knew what he was getting into.

> If a team expects this and you know you don't want to provide this to the team, THEN why are you choosing to work for them?

If an employer want an employee to spend the time between 17:00 to 01:00 at a bar then they can do what the owner of the bar do, employ a person to be in that bar. If the french law is similar to other countries then they would have to pay night wages, follow maximum work hours, and follow work safety regulations. There will also be a work contract that cover those hours.

If they don't want to employ a person for this job, or they don't want to follow the law that regulate employees, then don't use employees.

jumping into a fire or out of a plane is not on the contract but can be part of a “team building” activity. That is what i’m pointing out.

> Look beyond the legalities

haha, yeah thats the part that I want everyone to focus on in this debate.

> jumping into a fire or out of a plane is not on the contract but can be part of a “team building” activity. That is what i’m pointing out.

There's a concept of common sense. With common sense we can easily rule out jumping off of planes and into fires without getting pedantic or technical. Let's use some of this sense when talking so things don't get overly technical.

>haha, yeah thats the part that I want everyone to focus on in this debate.

Do we let laws define what's right and wrong? Or do we use common sense? Obviously it's common sense. Because laws can have loopholes and what else is it but common sense that is used to identify these loop holes? In the end that is the basis for our judgement. Law is simply a way to codify our fuzzy sense of morality into an exact logic. The problem, however, is that it is often wrong (with loop holes and tax laws and such) and we have to fall back to a fuzzy sense of what is right or wrong. AKA common sense.

Haha yeah, let's stick with common sense arguments rather then strict interpretations of the word of the law which is obviously flawed.

yeah, ok, it should be obligatory for companies to include the clause on firing the individual that does not comply with their drinking habits. Plain as that.

Not in the clause. It should be in the job description. Upfront and explicit:

   We expect you to drink and bond with the team. We are looking for a person who is very similar and can fit in very well socially with the team we have built.

I think this is fair. I think it is UNFAIR for someone who is not this person to pretend that he is, get the job then use the law to protect himself from getting fired.

Let me ask you, do you think what the later person did is fair?

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