And I thought I got fired for a bad reason — my story doesn’t even begin to compare to this woman who lost her job because she is a John Kerry supporter.
“We were going back to work from break, and my manager told me that Phil [the owner] said to remove the sticker off my car or I was fired,” she said. “I told him that Phil couldn’t tell me who to vote for. He said, ‘Go tell him.'”
She went to Gaddis’ office, knocked on the door and entered on his orders.
“Phil and another man who works there were there,” she said. “I asked him if he said to remove the sticker and he said, ‘Yes, I did.’ I told him he couldn’t tell me who to vote for. When I told him that, he told me, ‘I own this place.’ I told him he still couldn’t tell me who to vote for.”
Gobbell said Gaddis told her to “get out of here.”
“I asked him if I was fired and he told me he was thinking about it,” she said. “I said, ‘Well, am I fired?’ He hollered and said, ‘Get out of here and shut the door.'”
She said her manager was standing in another room and she asked him if that meant for her to go back to work or go home. The manager told her to go back to work, but he came back a few minutes later and said, ” ‘I reckon you’re fired. You could either work for him or John Kerry,’ ” Gobbell said.
“I took off my gloves and threw them in the garbage and left,” Gobbell said.
I’m so glad we live in a country where personal beliefs and freedom of expression are constitutionally protected.
(via Lane)
[Update (because this is what happens when I’m a week behind):]{.underline}
Turns out this story had a happy ending after only a couple days — according to Slate, Gobbel has been offered a job with the Kerry campaign.
The story was picked up by Daily Kos, a political Web log, and spread quickly around the Web. By this morning, Geddes, who has declined to comment publicly on the matter, had apparently had enough of the bad publicity. Through an intermediary, he offered Gobbell an apology and said she could have her old job back. But Gobbell said she wouldn’t return without some written guarantee that Geddes wouldn’t turn around and fire her once he was out of the spotlight. Then, late this afternoon, Kerry himself phoned Gobbell. “He was telling me how proud he was that I stood up,” Gobbell told me. “He’d read the part where Phil said I could either work for him or work for John Kerry. He said, ‘you let him know you’re working for me as of today.’ I was just so shocked.”
Gobbell accepted Kerry’s job offer, “so I reckon I’ll be working for John Kerry.” Kerry left it that someone from his campaign would call Gobbell to work out the details.
[…]
[Update, Sept. 17: I checked in with Gobbell this afternoon. “I go to work in the local [Kerry] office Monday,” she said. Kerry is matching her salary at Enviromate and is giving her health benefits. Gobbell is very happy about the latter because Enviromate (you won’t be surprised to learn) did not. Gobbell was vague about what her duties will be, but she said, “a little bit of traveling may be involved.”]
[Update, Sept. 20: Stancil reports in today’s Decatur Daily that Gobbell is set to travel to Florida on this, her first day working for Kerry, to tell her story to CNN, among others. Already, she told Stancil, she has appeared on 15 to 20 talk radio shows. Apparently telling the story of her firing by Enviromate is more or less going to be Gobbell’s job. This looks to me like a wise investment on Kerry’s part.]
(via Terrence)