How dare you defend your son from me calling him the 'R' word?? YOU'RE FIRED!!!!

[dendawg]

Unbelievable.

https://www.distractify.com/-font-de...pid=2&ts_pid=2

[s_stabeler]

there's two issues: 1. that people can apparently use the r-word to describe a disabled child with impunity, 2. that someone was fired for standing up to them.

it should NOT take this long for them to investigate- all thye need to establish is a) did the women say the r-word. b) was the guy fired for standing up for his own kid. If B is true, the manager needs to be either fired, or demoted from management. if a is true, then I would accept them being given a warning- either written or verbal- since there is no sign it was more than a one-off. ( if it ISN'T then they should be fired too)

oh, and the guy who was fired should probably be rehired if he was fired only for this- if, of course, he still wants to work there.

[Tama]

I sure wouldn't, this would just put him on the shit list where they write him up for every tiny infraction.

[Andara Bledin]

This depends entirely on context and being there.

After the fact reports, especially those entire from one side, are utterly unreliable.

"Retarded" as a term is slowly losing acceptability, but despite the fervent wishes of some, not everybody has gotten the memo that using "the r word" is a social faux pas along the lines of using "the n word."

Even the sister's account doesn't make any claims that the employees were being disrespectful in any way other than use of a term that has fallen out of favor. How did the former employee react? Did he say, "Oh, hey, yeah that term's not really in use any more, could you use 'replacement term' instead?" Or did the perceived insult to his son cause him to act out in an immature manner, thus prompting the manager to tell him to get over it or get out?

The corporate response is pretty much cya boilerplate for "we have no idea what happened and just have a bunch of people's word for whatever and the manager's side is totally inoccuous, so we're not going to override the decision of the people actually on the scene."

[protege]

Even the sister's account doesn't make any claims that the employees were being disrespectful in any way other than use of a term that has fallen out of favor. How did the former employee react? Did he say, "Oh, hey, yeah that term's not really in use any more, could you use 'replacement term' instead?" Or did the perceived insult to his son cause him to act out in an immature manner, thus prompting the manager to tell him to get over it or get out?

When that story originally aired, the guy didn't get fired. He was told to "get over it, or get out." There was no mention of his termination--he chose to leave instead. Before things got to that point, it wouldn't surprise me if he had a meltdown at work...

[TheRoo]

I think there is probably a lot missing from this story. As the father of a special needs teenager, I certainly don't like to hear that word being used in that context, but it is a fairly recent issue. Growing up in the 80's and 90's, nobody would give it a second thought.

About 6 months ago, a coworker who I always got along with fairly well used that word casually in conversation. All I said was "We don't use that word like that", and he restated his sentence using a different word. My thought on it is that most people who say it, probably don't think of it as offensive, but if you point it out, will realize that it can be a hurtful term. I thought that was the end of it, but the next morning, I got a very sincere heartfelt apology email from this coworker. He felt awful for saying it, and was up all night. I went over to his desk right away, and we had a really good conversation about it, and we became closer friends because of it.

To me, the issue would be, how did the father react? In my experience, when you respectfully point out to someone, it does change people's behavior. If you're an asshole about it, people tend to get very defensive and fight back.

[Canarr]

The way I understood the article, the son wasn't present, and the other employees weren't talking about him; they called the father, their coworker, retarded, in the sense of calling him an idiot, or a dumbass.

So, it's not a case of a father defending his son from people using derogatory terms for his condition; it's a case of the father of a special needs child objecting to the casual use of a term that has been (and probably still is) used as a negative description of kids with Down syndrome.

To me, it's understandable that he's upset; but if he complained to his manager, and his manager tells him to suck it up or leave, and he leaves, then he's basically fired himself. The right way would've been to take it further up the chain, and complain to his manager's boss - after all, that's creating a hostile work environment, isn't it?

As to the calls for firing the manager and the coworkers: seems excessive to me. If they'd actually been making fun of the man's son, then maybe; but for using a quesionable word in casual conversation? Wouldn't say so, no.

[Andara Bledin]

If they were insulting him, shouldn't somebody have mentioned that, particularly his sister?

[Estil]

And this situation is a perfect and sad example of how some kinds of discrimination are treated like one slip of the tongue should be enough to ruin someone, but with other kinds (especially the ones that are not illegal but certainly just as unethical/immoral) it's treated like it's not that big a deal.

[Gravekeeper]

Its never a good sign when a "news" article is written entirely in bold font. >.>

Here's the original story.


I can't find any follow up or updates anywhere as of yet though.

[Andara Bledin]

Well, except for the fact that that isn't what's going on here.

Back on topic, another report from the Conservative Tribune stated that they were specifically referring to his son as "retarded." If the account is accurate, it doesn't sound like he responds in a civil manner to such incidents. Also, the comments about him being told to "get over it or get out" match other reports, and it's likely his 'getting out' was treated like job abandonment.

Then there's this report at Huffington Post, which pretty much says a lot of the same things only with the fiance (note: I said sister earlier, but was mistaken - it was his fiance that took to Facebook) calling use of the word retarded "hate speech" and the reporter claiming that the employees were using it as in insult against her fiance. Though the comments they include in the article are ambiguous as to who was being spoken about, other posts she made seem to indicate it was being used as a joking disparagement between crew members.

This touches on another issue that I'm discussing on another forum refered to as the "Euphemism Treadmill" where one term is perfectly fine until it isn't, and you just replace it with a synonym which is, in turn, corrupted in the same exact way as the last term, and it just goes on and on and on.... And in this particular case, the term is out of favor, but not even all of the professional organizations that deal with such situations have changed their publications, so it's not surprising that laypeople might not have gotten the memo that the word has fallen out of favor and we have to move on to the next euphemism... I'm starting to wonder at what point we say that enough is enough and stop playing this game of retreat and regroup and cease letting haters define our terminology for us.

[Canarr]

From the original article quoted in the OP:

Bruce Casper was working at the Chili's in the Pittsburg Mills Mall in west PA when two female coworkers called him "retarded." Casper's youngest son Kyron has Down Syndrome, and when he said he would not tolerate the use of that word his manager said to him, "You can leave then."

Seems pretty straightforward to me: they called Casper "retarded", not his son.

From the article in the Conservative Tribune:

After father Bruce Casper was fired from a Chili’s restaurant in Pennsylvania for complaining about coworkers referring to his son Kyron, who suffers from Downs syndrome, as “retarded,” he and his wife took the story public and exposed the company’s horrific behavior.

Okay, there's a claim that the word was in referral to his son. But, further down in the same article:

“Yesterday he was called a retard again in front of management, and when he made it clear to everyone near that our son has Down Syndrome and he will not tolerate that word, management said, ‘You can leave then,’ so he did,” Casper’s fiancee Crista Miller wrote in a Facebook post.

If he has to inform his coworkers of his son's Down Syndrome after use of the r-word, then it doesn't seem possible the coworkers in question were talking about the son, after all. Stellar editing, there.

The Huffington Post has a lot of the same quotes; nothing new, there.

Personally, I can understand that someone with a special needs child might take offense to that; and it certainly shows a lack of both empathy and professionalism from his coworkers and his manager to ignore his request to avoid the r-word. Still, I don't think that should be a fireable offense, unless other insults could also lead to dismissal (creating a hostile work environment). And I don't think it qualifies as "hate speech" unless it is actually used in a hateful manner directly against people with a mental handicap - and not with the same level of vitriol someone would use, say, for "dumbass". Intent matters.

It's like Andara says: times change, words and their meanings change with them. Calling someone an idiot, an imbecile or a moron is entirely acceptable these days, but only 100 years ago, they were used as official classifications for different degrees of intellectual disability.

[s_stabeler]

hence why in my reply, I said that the only person who should be fired is the manager- and that was explicitly for firing ( or at least giving the impression of firing) the guy for sticking up for either himself or his son.

[Hyena Dandy]

It's not about letting haters define the term, it's about letting society and usage define the term. When the usage of a word reaches a point that it is more associated with disparagement than description, people push to change the word.

[mjr]

It's not about letting haters define the term, it's about letting society and usage define the term. When the usage of a word reaches a point that it is more associated with disparagement than description, people push to change the word.

You bring up an interesting point, and I'd considered starting a thread on this.

Why is it OK to use terms like "moron" and "idiot", but not the "r-word"?

I mean, sure, the "r-word" in certain contexts refers to the mental capacity/faculties of a person, medically.

But guess what: So do moron and idiot.

To quote WikiPedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Idiot):

In 19th and early 20th century medicine and psychology, an "idiot" was a person with a very severe intellectual disability. In the early 1900s, Dr. Henry H. Goddard proposed a classification system for intellectual disability based on the Binet-Simon concept of mental age. Individuals with the lowest mental age level (less than three years) were identified as idiots; imbeciles had a mental age of three to seven years, and morons had a mental age of seven to ten years.[8] The term "idiot" was used to refer to people having an IQ below 30.[9][10] IQ, or intelligence quotient, was originally determined by dividing a person's mental age, as determined by standardized tests, by their actual age. The concept of mental age has fallen into disfavor, though, and IQ is now determined on the basis of statistical distributions.

In current American medical classification, these people are now said to have "profound intellectual disability" but this term is not in use in the United Kingdom.

More:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moron_%28psychology%29

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intell...ty#Terminology