The chief executive of a Michigan bank has lost her job after facing backlash for a social media photo of her family in sweatshirts that read “Lake America,” referencing Donald Trump’s relabeling of Lake Ontario.
Jane Smith from Family First Credit Union recently went viral after sharing the photo of her and three relatives wearing navy blue crewnecks with the words “Lake America” scrawled in white. The picture was snapped as her family left on September 11 for a 10-day trip to Halifax, Nova Scotia, but Smith says the sweatshirts were edited onto their bodies using AI.
“We weren’t trying to make a political statement,” Smith told Michigan outlet WJRT. “However, we were kind of poking fun at the fact that one of the Great Lakes’ names were getting changed.”
Family First Credit Union announced Wednesday that Smith was no longer with the company and that Jason Acosta, the chief operations officer, would serve as interim CEO.
I was initially kind of torn on this one, since I don’t think a job should be able to fire you for something you do outside of work, no matter how idiotic, unless it breaks the law. Then I remembered that Republicans got a whole bunch of people fired for things they said about what’s-his-name, with the neck fountain.
So I’m ultimately coming down on the side of “fuck 'em, payback’s a bitch”.
Never seen a more beautiful fountain in my life
If you’re rank and file, sure. If you’re the CEO then posting something like this really brings your judgment into question.
I got the feeling that the photo was a joke made in AI. Maybe I’m giving the CEO too much credit idk. But, if the bank has any Canadian customers, I totally understand the firing.
You can’t alienate your customer base without consequences.
It’s an interesting issue, since it isn’t really a freedom of speech issue since the government is not censoring this person.
Republicans cried foul in cases like these (which are not censorship) and then put in an administration that DOES do censorship.
Generally speaking, Republicans don’t agree with regulations that would prevent employers from hiring or firing however they want.
Then they started stripping funding from institutions that supposedly were “DEI hiring”.
So at this point they’re clear that “cancel culture is only bad when Trump supporters are fired”.
I have a more nuanced view, which is that if you accept a job where you are very publicly associated with the company, the employer should be able to have a clause where they specify you can be terminated for your public social media activity. Anything that isn’t fully public doesn’t count.
It would have to be clear that it is a condition of employment that you not get political on social media as you’re accepting a C level position, etc.
If you post anonymously somewhere and that account isn’t actually associated with you or your company, then that should be like a workaround for the above.
Otherwise, as long as you aren’t associating your public posts WITH your company, and aren’t harassing your coworkers, etc, they shouldn’t be able to fire you for them.
It very much is a freedom of speech issue, it’s just not a violation of US law.
Technically correct, I suppose.
If you mean lower case “freedom of speech”, sure the English definition of those words would agree with you. Colloquially when most folks in the USA say “Freedom of Speech” they’re not referring to the definition of English words in the phrase but rather the First Amendment to the Constitution.
So it might be a case of “freedom of speech” but its not a case of “Freedom of Speech”. In either situation, it isn’t a freedom from consequences of that speech.
Taking the high ground when dealing with someone who stoops low isn’t a a sign of virtue, it comes off more as weakness. Not because of your restraint on the matter but because your allowing your opponent to walk all over you. This is often what Ill natured people don’t understand or choose not to. If they’re going to bully people using such tactics, it’s justifyed to retaliate in kind.
Charlie Kirk
Who? Non American here.
Yeah, that’s the neck fountain I was thinking of. Thanks!
Anytime
I have a much more vivid imagination of what idiotic things people outside of work can say and lots of it should be and is a fire-able offense even if it doesn’t break the law.
Even then, its not that “you can be fired for what you say outside of work”, but in the USA instead we have an extremely small list of things that we outlaw firing people for, and its a good list of protections (protected classes):
For everything else we have “at will” employment, which means you can quiet whenever you like and you can be fired whenever your employer wants to. I’ll agree its got some flaws, but I would not want to add “anything legal under the first amendment” as a protected class.
For the idiot bully in the OP article, she deserved to be fired.
You can always quit work