Corporations are so very dehumanizing. The good of the few shareholders at the expense of the human experience for the individuals who labor typically a minimum of 1/2 of their waking hours but are summarily fired if they so much as speak their mind.
We've accepted this system. Many people at this site will vote me down for questioning the good of the corporate body over the good of the individual. Many will simply vote me down just because it was in the poor guy's contract. But the bottom line is that American Airlines fires people who try to reasonably speak their mind. Simple as that. And the people who vote down against the good of people in favor of the good of the corporate body are the enemy.
For the record, I almost voted you down because when I read things like "many people at this site will vote me down", I take it as a dare. Your point is no weaker if you leave out the baiting and reverse psychology.
You could easily have phrased that to avoid coming across as reverse psychology - "Since when is HN so defensive of <bigco policy> and shareholder interests at the detriment of users" etc - as a few other posts in this thread have done. Note how most of them are not tremendously downvoted. You, on the other hand, mention voting down your post three times in a single paragraph, each time attacking potential reasons - not covering every reason of course, only the ones that everyone sane should agree are Bad Things. Philosophy class is a bit far now, but isn't this a classic red herring?
"And the people who vote down against the good of people in favor of the good of the corporate body are the enemy."
Clearly meant to make people think that if they vote you down they are the enemy of the Good of the People, rather than letting them form their own responses based on the merits of your argument. Bullshit rhethoric likes this is what has no place here. Discuss the facts or the ethics of matters as you will, but please leave karma-baiting rhethoric out of your posts.
An interesting response. Thanks. My wording was lame and included unnecessarily expressed social forum fears.
However, it's incorrect that I'm karma baiting. Rightly or wrongly I mention that I essentially worry I'll be attacked. But my central, and I admit strongly worded point, is genuine and I stand by it. I think that we as a society have allowed the corporate mindset to dominate us in a way that our civilization will hopefully grow out of at some point.
While my rhetoric is abrasive, what I'm specifically opposing is the corporate dehumanization that is considered normal and even good by many people. It's very hard not to be abrasive when talking about such things. On the one hand you have a person who's fired for a technical breach of contract when it's clear that he was operating reasonably and in good faith, and on the other you have many people who's eyes glaze over at the injustice and harm to an individual's career because, hell, he screwed up and he breached his contract.
How to unglaze those eyes? I think one way is by making them take a side in the issue.
That whole "freedom isn't free" doesn't just apply to sticks and guns, but also to ideas, as you clearly know. It costs to say strong things, for me it costs me fear that people just won't like me.
It works. There are no examples of large companies that do different. Small ones? Sure. But once they reach a certain size they either change, or go under.
You sold your labor. End of story. It's not your company, you don't get to decide how it should run. If you don't like it you don't have to work there, if you want to work there you have to accept it.
If I hire a landscaper to make me a wall, and he decides the wall will look better 1 foot over, I'm fully within my rights to fire or not pay him.
You can speak your mind inside the company, but the public "speakings" of the company do not belong to you.
It sucks, I know. But changing it would make things worse, not better.
Large companies have policies. They have these policies because they don't want people breaking them.
Now, you might say, "well, technically he broke the policy, but I don't see how..."
a) he revealed any big public secrets
b) he said anything we don't already know
c) it did more harm than good in the form of responding to someone with a reasonable criticism
d) etc...
It doesn't matter. If you want to break company policy, you get permission to do so. If a large company allows people to break policies "so long as its not so bad..." they will run into problem of interpretation. Mr. X broke policy, and he got fired. Maybe it seemed reasonable at the time, maybe he did it because he cared, maybe he predicted that doing so would increase AA's business. Doesn't matter, at the end of the day, AA was well within its rights to fire him and they might well have been right to do so to stop others from speaking their mind whenever they feel like it.
Don't like the system? Think it should be more careful, discriminate between helpful breaks and unhelpful ones? Want it more fair? Well, I'm sure a lot of people do, and many of them have probably tried to come up with a business model that does all this and is also efficient. Seems like they aren't being adopted by large companies... so there is probably a good reason.
If you really want things to change (and I hope you do, because I agree, a lot of change would be welcomed by a lot of people) you need to propose a reasonable solution to this problem.
We've accepted this system. Many people at this site will vote me down for questioning the good of the corporate body over the good of the individual. Many will simply vote me down just because it was in the poor guy's contract. But the bottom line is that American Airlines fires people who try to reasonably speak their mind. Simple as that. And the people who vote down against the good of people in favor of the good of the corporate body are the enemy.