Waterstones come out as GC and fire TRA for social media post

[woman2womanmeetswomanparrish]

Fantsatstic news, Christina Dalcher has sucessfully managed to get this TRA fired from their job at Waterstones for X comment.

https://x.com/TillyLovesBooks/status/1810337926850445453?t=WABH0ieBQdnUtaQL5FVlyQ&s=19

there is every need to be so mardy (are you from the midlands-been ages since I heard "mardy'?) fucking sick of trans nutters thinking they can say and do anything they like and are amazed, amazed I tell you, when consequences occur.

There may be more to it than just that one tweet🤷‍♀️

Waterstones obviously aren't going to comment publicly on HR matters, but their side of the story might well be different.

Rufus got a deletion? That's mad.

If you are happily saying you will rip up books, and your job is to sell books, then what use are you really to a bloody book selling company?

That is the worst fake crying I have ever seen.

Yeah.... I'm not buying the "she was talking about ripping up her own books line" which is doing the rounds on Twitter.

Firstly, CD is fairly well-know for her terfiness and no self-respecting TRA bookblogger would own her books.

Secondly, and this one is more tenuous because they have form for this sort of stupidity, saying you're going to rip up books that have already been bought and paid for isn't much of an act of activism.

At a guess, she just opened her mouth and let her belly rumble, and thought she was untouchable because that's the online bubble these sorts operate in.

It makes them just so much more upset when reality bites.

@thestudio @Melroses @zibzibara The woman in question has a very large social media presence as a Bookstagrammer - having followed her at one point I'm pretty sure she mentions her employers. Even her Instagram bio says 'bookseller (and book lover)'.

The punishment was therefore - rightly - stricter compared to , say someone who doesn't have a very public association with their employers

I'm not a TwiX user and am no judge of these things, perhaps it means nothing, but she doesn't seem to have many likes compared to views.

I think it’s implied - because she presumably wouldn’t buy the books as she dislikes the author, so the only access she would have would be the stock in the shop.

But I think it’s more about image. It doesn’t look good for an employee of a bookshop to talk about destroying books, especially when the bookshop presumably has a contract with the author their employee is slagging off. To use the clothing analogy again, it would be like a shop assistant at Next publicly saying that Lipsy dresses were shit and she was going to rip them up.

Also, we’ve only got her word for it that this was a first offence. We have no idea if she’s had warnings before.

Actually having watched again, it's interesting that she says 'it's the first mistake I've ever made'.

I think the tears are genuine in the sense that she's one of patriarchy's Good Girls who has deeply internalised the #BeKind message and willed her way through massive cognitive dissonance in order to see terfs, not men, as the real threat.

Now she can't believe that she did everything she was told and she's still being cast out.

Yep. No one builds up a small library of books about a subject, or by authors they hate by accident. Especially not a person who works with books for a living. Ripping up her own books is just a feeble excuse. In reality she probably wouldn't have ripped up any books, just wanted to get her message out and prove what a good ally she was. Virtue signalling.

I do think the other(?) person on X who is involved in the review and purchasing of books and the "TERFs don't send me books" message would be far more damaging to authors.

The OP is just a foolish person who mouthed off without thinking and forked themself in the process. I don't think people should loose their jobs over this, a manager having a stern word should have been enough.
"You do realise we are in the book selling business right?"
"Yes...."
"Would YOU still like to be in the book selling business tomorrow?"

I'm guessing she's fallen foul of some "bringing the company into disrepute" or something. She's certainly admitting she has made a mistake so I doubt she'll try for unfair dismissal. Badly judged and naively not realising the rules apply to her, too, even if her post reads to me like a bit of empty, childish bluster. The kind of "oooh I hate you so much I'm gonna kill you" that kids shout in the playground. Still, she tied her social media to her employer so it's her own fault I'm afraid.

I do think the other(?) person on X who is involved in the review and purchasing of books and the "TERFs don't send me books" message would be far more damaging to authors.

I agree @lechiffre55 - is that person also employed by Waterstones, do we know?

Or Gerald Ratner saying
'We do cut-glass sherry decanters complete with six glasses on a silver-plated tray that your butler can serve you drinks on, all for £4.95,' he told the Institute of Directors event.
'People say: 'How can you sell this for such a low price?' I say: 'Because it's total crap.'
He added: 'We sold a pair of earrings for under £1, which is cheaper than a shrimp sandwich from Marks and Spencer, but probably wouldn't last as long.' It became known as 'doing a Ratner' and still serves as a warning for top chief executives to this day.

Link for anyone feeling a little nostalgic at hearing his name.
www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/markets/article-9505003/Gerald-Ratner-reeling-30-years-gaffe.html

Yeah, exactly.

If a GC person has said "I'm going to rip up all trans positive books aimed at kids" on twitter they would have been fired. Would people be saying that waterstones is now transallied? Be serious.

Oh, wait -- this is what she now has to say about the situation:

"Just going to say one more thing before I switch off, aside from thank you to everyone who’s been so bloody kind. For the last time, the books were my own personal books, and I’ve never done anything but sell whichever books I was asked to in the shop."

I've only just realised she didn't say that she was going to throw away the books in her bookstore. In that case, no, not good. Companies shouldn't fire staff over implicature.

Bookshops don’t have contracts with authors.
Bookshops buy copies of an author’s book through their publisher’s distributor.
They order on a credit account, pay for the books, then the copies belong to the bookshop, which they sell to the customer.

Otherwise, yes. Sounds like a case of bringing them into disrepute via the means of social media. Presumably they were all good with her use of social media (is good PR for them after all) until she used that platform to say something they didn’t like/ brought them into disrepute.

Re the thread title, none of this means Waterstones has declared a philosophical stance of being gender critical though.

She’s back pedalling. She wouldn’t have any of that author’s books.

Did some sensitive little flower get upset 😩😩😩😩😩

good lord 😀

God, so many do this. It’s a thing. But completely unhealthy IMO as it’s so performative, encourages young people to weirdly distance themselves from their emotions, and just no.

Also missing the point…

She must be feeling rough too because she announced she had Covid on the evening of 4th July and then travelled across France a few days later. The view is stunning from where she videoed.

She used a social media account associated with her role at Waterstones to threaten to destroy an author's books. Regardless of whether or not she's talking about shop stock (which I honestly believe was the threat, though I don't believe she'd have done it) or her own books, he tweet was gross misconduct. Waterstones had to fire her. They also have a section in their contracts relating to conduct on social media that would make her firing watertight, legally.

Good news generally but this is waterstones being anti "employees thinking it's ok to destroy and dispose of company property that is supposed to be promoted and sold" rather than being specifically GC.

I wouldn't want anyone to lose their job just for believing in genderwoo nonsense but if the magic in your head makes you do something so abhorent something has gone really wrong.

Destroying books is what fascists do. If you aren't a fascist you counter ideas with other ideas that are better thought-through, better evidenced and more rationally-based than the ideas you disagree with. You do not destroy ideas by destroying books.

Completely agree. Why would she own books by a writer she clearly despises?

Destroying books is what fascists do

fuck me don’t say that

i got deleted for saying nazi adjacent….someone out there really doesn’t like books!

Or are nazis not fascists?

i get confused

can i say fascist adjacent?

or maybe its the adjacent word 🤔