i have never heard of anyone getting fired here for being no fun, but i have heard of people getting fired for having too much “fun”. a lot of what the guy didn’t want to participate in sounds like what would be a sexual harassment case here.
US laws regarding what you can fire someone for are pretty loose—particularly in “right to work states” (see how they made it sound like it’s good for you!). This is more difficult in places where unions are active and present because the unions typically negotiate more direct reasons for termination.
Now, just because someone fires you for a dumb reason, doesn’t mean you can’t fight it. However, there’s a limit to that value. So, if an employer offers some sort of severance you often loose your case. Simply for the matter that you can’t demand much more than lost wages, for a reasonable period of time.
It seems in the USA to mostly be with younger workers and “hustle culture/start ups” those “work hard/play hard” type places.
I had a younger partner for a few years whose career gave me insight to that world a bit more.
Asides the standard “lack of opportunity to network” that can get you on the chopping block- her coworkers and managers at these events tended to view habitually absent persons as either “not team players,” or, through what I suspect were their own issues- as somehow rejecting the members of the group. Ideas like “we aren’t good enough to spend time with..” or “I guess the chance to network and build the team wasn’t as important to them as other things..” and so on. I also witnessed various politics and assassinations of personal or professional character, of which being absent deprived one the chance to defend against. I do recall one of her former coworkers who did end up coming up over time and was eventually let go because their absences from such events…
.. were noticed and over time as an outsider I saw as their name started to become more and more negatively associated. People would discuss seemingly petty or mundane acts and ascribe some malice or negative intent to them- the way this woman sent emails or answered a question or her “attitude” etc. eventually they let her go as a poor fit.
Another place I’ve seen what could be called be fired for not being fun is in businesses I’ve worked. Those who deal with corporate relationships, vendors, clients, etc. Back when, if product went for a lunch with our Japanese business relationships representatives, everyone anticipated they’d come back just shy of drunk. It was a somewhat expected cultural practice and to maintain favorable relations, you needed to do business over drinks. In the world of sales, especially larger corporate sales, the stories can get pretty wild. Some things have changed as the world has changed so it can still happen but my guess is it is less common across…
.. fewer businesses, but some many years ago, it was pretty reasonably common to take clients or prospective clients to some pretty wild places. When we are talking millions or hundreds of millions in dollars and what was then almost exclusively a male populated playing field, drugs, strip clubs, even cat houses and such were some common places for “business meetings.” Simply put, while officers aren’t supposed to let personal incentives sway them- often they do. More over, in many businesses you are so busy and work so many hours that your personal and business life intertwine. You can spend days or weeks at a time totaling months each year at seminars and conferences and committees or high level meeting “retreats” with the same 10 or 20 people, 14+ hours a day, year after year, decade after decade even when you change companies as at that level the faces tend to stay the same in certain roles.
A lot of these people are insufferable narcissists and sociopaths but they have…
.. to find some ways to get along and not want to jump out of a window while having a little fun. There is also, at that level but at lower levels too- an element that people want to know that you have a similar “culture.” The final piece is dirt. I can’t stress dirt enough. Asides the rare fluke or such, you don’t generally get to higher levels of business wealth and you really don’t stay there by being an Eagle Scout. We can skip the speech, a handful of people on earth are capable of producing such amazing quality or quantity of work as to justify 100x or more the average salary. More money is more dirt to your name 99% of the time period.
A quick story.
Star Wars was made for kids. Luke was going to get the girl which is why he kisses his sister and we don’t find out they are related until the sequel. She wasn’t his sister. Han Solo wasn’t nearly as heroic and was even intended as a throw away character. Luke was clearly the “hero,” he was honest and innocent and a goodie goodie chosen to be a space monk warrior.
Except… adults liked star wars and the character that resonates with them was Han. This is repeated in fiction and the “anti hero” isn’t new but in relatively recent history became a mainstream cultural phenomenon. We don’t need to explore the whole thing. Little kids or those often considered “immature” tend to like heroes who are paragons- good at things, free of what they’d see as flaws. They are “good guys.” Adults… we tend to grapple even in our own lives with the concept of “good guys” and “bad guys” because by a certain age most of us have made enough mistakes and have done
enough morally ambiguous or outright wrong things and learned that life generally requires certain compromises or that we can’t stand up to every wrong we see in the world or fight every battle that we can’t relate much to “pure” characters.
They aren’t realistic or interesting. In fact- most of us find “goodie goodies” who never swear and never are lazy or never bend a rule or always report others for such things and so on- we find them annoying. Most people feel a certain self consciousness about drinking alone in a group. Most people have aspects of themselves that maybe aren’t noble but they accept as part of themselves and don’t want to change. Simply put- we don’t like people reminding us of our failings. A common sentiment with “goody two shoes” is a perception they think they are better than us or such. As humans we prefer to misbehave as groups.
Imagine for ONE second Slavery. Like- it never existed and you go to someone’s house and they have a human being they start whipping for not doing their work for them, or they keep in a cage. You’d probably be like “WTF?!” But- if all your neighbors have slaves…. If one of your friends starts smoking crack cocaine, they’re probably not going to be able to sit on equal social terms with the rest of you, so of course they’d likely prefer if their friends smoked crack too. Not so coincidentally- these types of folks tend to end up with friend groups of similar people. Smokers tend to be a bit left out when most around them don’t smoke and non smokers tend to be left out a bit when most around them smoke. If you move to a neighborhood with all beige houses and a rule houses must be beige, you likely won’t paint your house blue.
If you move to a neighborhood where the rule is houses must be beige but you see there are all color houses, you’d probably be more comfortable to break that rule. Basic human stuff there. We are more likely to break rules or more comfortable breaking rules- social, moral, manners, legal, etc. when we aren’t the only ones doing it generally.
So dirt can be very important in business. More so because it is a safety net. If you are that arare bird who makes it to the upper echelons of wealth and commerce without a single bit of wrong to your name worth mentioning- everyone around you is worried. If you know a man burrows a hooker in the desert 20 years ago after a night gone wrong, you aren’t so worried he’s going to eat you out or use as leverage that you cómitres securities fraud. If Jim is cheating on his wife on business trips, you aren’t so worried that you’ll get judged or outed for cheating on your spouse and so forth.
So there are some cases I’d say in America where people do get fired at least as a consequence of a failure to fit the culture and expectation of “fun” at work. I think it’s MOSTLY younger “hipper” corporate cultures but there is a case that the more “old school” 3 martini lunch or certain other relics like that are examples of where people get fired for being “no fun.” The same is true to some extent of certain types of whistle blowers where some things that aren’t legal are “come on- we were just having a little fun. Don’t be so uptight..” and since it becomes much more difficult and much more damaging generally to fire such a person AFTER they blow the whistle, the goal is often to root out those people relatively early by testing their comfort levels and responses to various behaviors and then finding “other” reasons to fire them, when the reality is whatever the paper said- you weren’t liked or were considered a liability.
Now, just because someone fires you for a dumb reason, doesn’t mean you can’t fight it. However, there’s a limit to that value. So, if an employer offers some sort of severance you often loose your case. Simply for the matter that you can’t demand much more than lost wages, for a reasonable period of time.
I had a younger partner for a few years whose career gave me insight to that world a bit more.
Asides the standard “lack of opportunity to network” that can get you on the chopping block- her coworkers and managers at these events tended to view habitually absent persons as either “not team players,” or, through what I suspect were their own issues- as somehow rejecting the members of the group. Ideas like “we aren’t good enough to spend time with..” or “I guess the chance to network and build the team wasn’t as important to them as other things..” and so on. I also witnessed various politics and assassinations of personal or professional character, of which being absent deprived one the chance to defend against. I do recall one of her former coworkers who did end up coming up over time and was eventually let go because their absences from such events…
Another place I’ve seen what could be called be fired for not being fun is in businesses I’ve worked. Those who deal with corporate relationships, vendors, clients, etc. Back when, if product went for a lunch with our Japanese business relationships representatives, everyone anticipated they’d come back just shy of drunk. It was a somewhat expected cultural practice and to maintain favorable relations, you needed to do business over drinks. In the world of sales, especially larger corporate sales, the stories can get pretty wild. Some things have changed as the world has changed so it can still happen but my guess is it is less common across…
A lot of these people are insufferable narcissists and sociopaths but they have…
A quick story.
Except… adults liked star wars and the character that resonates with them was Han. This is repeated in fiction and the “anti hero” isn’t new but in relatively recent history became a mainstream cultural phenomenon. We don’t need to explore the whole thing. Little kids or those often considered “immature” tend to like heroes who are paragons- good at things, free of what they’d see as flaws. They are “good guys.” Adults… we tend to grapple even in our own lives with the concept of “good guys” and “bad guys” because by a certain age most of us have made enough mistakes and have done
They aren’t realistic or interesting. In fact- most of us find “goodie goodies” who never swear and never are lazy or never bend a rule or always report others for such things and so on- we find them annoying. Most people feel a certain self consciousness about drinking alone in a group. Most people have aspects of themselves that maybe aren’t noble but they accept as part of themselves and don’t want to change. Simply put- we don’t like people reminding us of our failings. A common sentiment with “goody two shoes” is a perception they think they are better than us or such. As humans we prefer to misbehave as groups.
So dirt can be very important in business. More so because it is a safety net. If you are that arare bird who makes it to the upper echelons of wealth and commerce without a single bit of wrong to your name worth mentioning- everyone around you is worried. If you know a man burrows a hooker in the desert 20 years ago after a night gone wrong, you aren’t so worried he’s going to eat you out or use as leverage that you cómitres securities fraud. If Jim is cheating on his wife on business trips, you aren’t so worried that you’ll get judged or outed for cheating on your spouse and so forth.