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“Imagine that societal roles were completely re-fashioned and redistributed, and that from behind your veil of ignorance you do not know what role you will be reassigned. Only then can you truly consider the morality of an issue.”
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But he was an arse! He deserved to get fired! I can see how grey areas could emerge, but this doesn’t appear to be one. I think this is making the webloggers look dumb, not Waterstones…
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4 replies on “Links for 2005-02-05”
Yes, Mr Bastardstones was an arse, but he was also the bloke in Edinburgh for science-fiction stuff; and since science-fiction authors are more likely than others to be bloggers, his sacking has just ensured that Cory, Charlie Stross, etc. won’t be doing a book-signing in the Edinburgh Waterstones again.
Sometimes it’s better business sense to keep people on the inside, pissing out, rather than kicking them out so they can piss in.
If I was Waterstones in this situation, I’m afraid I’d think of that kind of stuff as borderline blackmail, and the kind of thing that would result in almost impossible working practices. If you want to write vile things about your employers, you can do it! You just have to do it anonymously! This is not terribly complex stuff. If you said vile things about your mother and she found out about it, you would expect her to get cross. If you wrote things about cheating on your girlfriend and she found out you’d expect her to leave you. And if you call your employers names in public then you must at least expect them to raise an eyebrow, take you into a room and ask you to stop.
I’ve only read a few posts of this guy’s weblog, and the impression I got was that he wasn’t so much pissed off with the company as a whole as he was with his arse of a boss. And I can completely understand his frustration in that regard, having had the displeasure of working under a store manager who couldn’t manage his way out of a paper bag. (They’re always the ones who move up in that sort of work – they have no idea of the concept of ‘customer service’, which is supposed to be the bloody point in the retail industry, yet they kiss arse and get promoted.)
However, he did bring the company into disrepute by misdirecting his anger. I almost did it myself, but I thought better of it.
I think the general feeling is he should have been called into a small room and whacked with a haddock until he understood the rules of civility. Then the haddock wielder should have asked him why he was so angry with his boss.
His real problem was that he clung to a drek job for a clown, when he had the skills and passion to do much better for himself. His weblog may well have helped him to do this.
Now he has the much better job. But I bet they had a word with him about the limits to his blog.