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The Hydro One employee, who has since been terminated, was not the man who yelled the crude remark. He did, however, defend it: “It is f—— hilarious … it’s f—— amazing, and I respect it,” he said, when confronted by Hunt. “You’re lucky there’s not a f—— vibrator here,” he added. That man was quickly identified as Shawn Simoes, an assistant network management engineer for Hydro One, whose $106,510.50 salary has earned him a spot on the Sunshine List. By Monday afternoon, the company announced the man had been fired for violating Hydro One’s code of conduct.

Much has been made of the fact that Simoes was not the one to actually yell FHRITP — he just defended it, laughed at it and tossed in a quip about a vibrator. Pittance, some say. Still, I imagine those same people would be less likely to excuse his behaviour had his friend, say, hurled a racial slur at a black journalist, and later, confronted by the reporter, merely defended the insult and maybe added in something about black people being lazy. Well, in that case…

Privacy purists will say that what a person does in his or her spare time should be of no concern to his or her employer. And perhaps years ago, that point could be realistically defended. But welcome to 2015, baby.

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There is likely a clause buried in nearly every employee contract that says if the employee acts in a disreputable manner — on or off the job — the employer has grounds for termination. Some say that sort of clause amounts to an infringement on basic freedoms. In practice, however, it’s mostly just an infringement on the ability of men and women to act like boorish clods in public. And it bears mentioning that there was nothing “private” about what the now-former Hydro One employee did; it’s not as if he yelled obscenities at his TV in the privacy of his own home. He defended and doubled-down on a vulgar phrase directed at a woman who was just trying to do her job. Hydro One is free to decide if it wants to carry the baggage of keeping this guy on its payroll and dealing with the inevitable backlash that will follow. It opted not to. That’s its prerogative.

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It would be lovely if we were able to compartmentalize the many aspects of our lives, such that the events of our family lives and social lives and professional lives had no effect whatsoever on one another. And in decades past, that might’ve been possible. It’s not now. In 2013, two Toronto firefighters were terminated over so-called “unacceptable” tweets posted to their personal social media accounts. That same year, a couple of RIM employees were fired after getting drunk on an Air Canada flight, forcing the flight to divert course. And in November 2014, a minor hockey coach in B.C. was fired over pro-Nazi posts on Facebook. There are endless more examples.

We can either try to push back against a social shift that is evermore the new norm, or accept that if we want to act like idiots in public or post Neo-Nazi propaganda on Facebook, our employers might not be too happy. Freedom of speech is still alive and well, but that doesn’t include freedom from consequences. Yell FHRITP all you want; just don’t expect to be invited back to work the next day.

National Post

Robyn Urback • rurback@nationalpost.com | robynurback