Now, where did I put yesterday’s .gif? Oh, there it is.
While courts (and bloggers) wrestle with Facebook-related lawsuits, email is a different story. There’s this lawyer joke that the “E” in E-mail stands for Exhibit A. Or, what’s the other joke? Oh yeah, bad e-mails are like dirty diapers: they stink and they don’t go away easily.
(No, none of us will be opening for Jerry Seinfeld — or Carrot Top, for that matter — anytime soon).
The point here is that a single bad employer email can really undermine the defense of a discrimination lawsuit. Kinda like the email quoted below allegedly sent after a job interview, and the centerpiece of a new EEOC age discrimination complaint:
“Thanks for your reply. I check the details of [sic] you. And you [sic] born in 1945. So I discussed with the client side. Age will matter. So that’s why I can’t [sic] be able to submit your profile to client side.”
Yolo! Oh, FFS! All that’s missing is, “PS – Yes, we are discriminating against you because your [sic] old, you white-hared [sic] old man born at the end of World War II.”
As the EEOC reminds us in this press release, passing on a job candidate explicitly because of his age is a good way to end up in an EEOC press release. So train your managers and decision-makers and millenials that a conversation is often better than an email or text.
But, either way, maybe don’t admit that a protected class motivated an employment decision.