San Diego Gas and Electric (SDG&E) fired employee Emmanuel Cafferty after a stranger took his picture on the highway because he supposedly made a white power gesture.
From NBC San Diego:
Cafferty claims he was just cracking his knuckles.Soon after the encounter, a supervisor of Cafferty’s told him he was suspended and that further action may be taken after an investigation. A few days later, he says he was fired.Cafferty maintains he was unaware of the hand gesture until the whole controversy started.”When my supervisor said that I was being accused of doing a white supremacist gesture, that was baffling,” Cafferty told NBC 7 on Monday.”I don’t know how long it’s going to take me to get over this, but to lose your dream job for playing with your fingers, that’s a hard pill to swallow,” Cafferty said.
The traditional sign for “okay” has been used for as long as I can remember. But these rights groups claim that white supremacists have only recently used it as a white supremacist sign “to form the letters W and P.”
Cafferty didn’t even use it as the okay sign. Has the Twitter person ever seen how people crack their knuckles?
Look at SDG&E’s statement:
SDG&E said in a statement: “We hold all SDG&E employees to a high standard and expect them to live up to our values every day. We conducted a good faith and thorough investigation that included gathering relevant information and multiple interviews, and took appropriate action.”
Um, what? Obviously the company did not!
The man behind the Twitter account deleted the account. He told NBC San Diego “he may have gotten ‘spun up’ about the interaction and misinterpreted it” and “never intended for Cafferty to lose his job.”
People. Please. For the love of everything in the world step back, take a deep breath, and think. It only takes a minute to ruin someone’s life.
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