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

@ColinMyWifeBridgerton but this lady isn’t any old employee. She posts a lot of book reviews etc and has done videos at her place of work as part of her social media presence.

I agree if I am an anonymous Asda employee and I tweet “Coke should be poured down the sink, Pepsi is better” then I probably shouldn’t lose my job.

But if publishers get onto Waterstones saying “ hey, your high profile employee with tens of thousands of followers on the subject of books thinks certain books should be ripped up” - it gives Waterstones a problem.

And this person is very aware of the difference in social media power too. Remember they disparaged the author’s low follower count. That is a narc move.

I didn't think this was how UK employment law worked, you can't surely be told you're fired straight out like that. Unless she was on probation and they told her they weren't going to permanently offer her a job, or there have been two other incidences on her employment record with this company.

Are there any HR people who could comment?

I'm not an HR person, but I think if you've done something that very obviously brings your employer into disrepute, or breached the terms of your contract, then you can be sacked.

Good analogy.

Noone is literally going to pour Cola down the sink just because you said so, and people are capable of deciding what soda to drink for themselves regardless of such statement. If this was all that was said and it was reported Asda would probably give an informal telling at the worst.

@@Rightsraptor, who was Linehan talking about? It's clear the woman who was fired is included in his definition of "worst people in the world". Yes Graham, if you so say [rolls eyes]

https://archive.ph/iu60n

And just look at the state of this thread. Anyone would think this wasn't about helping women at all (this is supposedly a feminism/women's rights forum) and people here are just out to inconvenience anyone who doesn't share gender critical views (including women) then celebrate if anything bad happens to those who aren't gender critical as a result. This place isn't women looking out for women. It's people with gender critical views looking out for people with gender critical views.

OP: Fantsatstic news, Christina Dalcher has sucessfully managed to get this TRA fired from their job

Comment 1: Great news!

Comment 2: Brilliant!

Comment 3: My goodness, that clip..."poor little me" [referring to the fired woman]

Yes , I take your points. In the case I represented the guy was doing quite hard work outdoors when the line manager drove up and rebuked him for not wearing his Hi-Vis vest. So yes , an instant, unpremeditated response no doubt! Nightmare to defend though. But I don't know how I would represent the book binner. It's hard to know where she could be redeployed even , in Waterstones?

If a bookshop employs you, then the first golden rule is you must love books and handle them with care. By talking about ripping up books - whether it’s her own private collection or Waterstone’s stock - Tilly demonstrates a total disregard for books as aesthetically beautiful things. It’s also authoritarian censorship and it begs the question, what does she do with books she disapproves of in store? Does she hide them? Does she handle them roughly? Does she give a dirty look to any member of the public wishing to purchase a ‘problematic’ title?

If you worked in a pottery shop and discovered one of the ceramicists held views you disagreed with, and you said you looked forward to smashing up their pots - again, you’re showing a disregard for the aesthetic beauty of a product you are supposed to be trying to sell. Doesn’t matter if you’re smashing up pots in your private collection, you’re showing a lack of care.

For what it’s worth I don’t think Tilly should have been fired so abruptly, I think a written warning and the chance to retract her comment - and learn from it - would have been more helpful to all concerned, but she seems to be doubling down in her defiance.

I agree that I don’t know where she could have been redeployed in Waterstones. I guess though she will be best employed in an activist bookshop.

I think many of us could empathise with the employee you represented.

If I were a betting woman, I'd guess that, far from being the model employee who is the absolute bestest at selling books, Tilly is actually a total PITA whose card was already marked with HR and a clear instance of gross misconduct was the ideal opportunity to get rid of her.

And just look at the state of this thread. Anyone would think this wasn't about helping women at all (this is supposedly a feminism/women's rights forum) and people here are just out to inconvenience anyone who doesn't share gender critical views (including women) then celebrate if anything bad happens to those who aren't gender critical as a result. This place isn't women looking out for women. It's people with gender critical views looking out for people with gender critical views.

There are plenty of people on this thread expressing concern for anyone losing their job.

Plenty have questioned whether Waterstone's response is reasonable and proportionate (whilst acknowledging that we have no idea what this individual's contractual terms were, we don't know whether they had already had warnings, we don't know how Waterstone's would describe what happened etc).

People have also, rightly, said that a bookseller admitting to ripping up trans books should also face disciplinary action. (I am not aware of any examples of this happening though.)

No one is celebrating this person losing their job. No one. There is, however, a degree of hubris here. Many women have lost their jobs for saying sex exists, including in the publishing industry... (See for example recent X posts by the woman who published Kathleen Stock's book Material Girls.)

The irony of this post. Have you read a synopsis of Vox, 🍎?

This. If she'd apologised, and recognised that however much she disagreed with someone's stance that chucking their books and crowing about it was not appropriate with the job she had, I'd have maybe had some smidge of sympathy for a hard lesson learned.

But slagging her off, setting the TRA mob on her and her (previous) employer, nope. She hasn't learned anything, she still thinks she's in the right, I think she still believes GC authors should have their books taken off shelves and chucked away. That they have no place, no voice, and she has morals and is righteous for doing it.

We all know what would happen if an employee of Waterstones tweeted they were going to chuck a trans or trans rights author's books in the bin. The TRAs would want blood, and would be celebrating with glee when they got sacked.

One could argue that tit for that gets us nowhere, but scores of women have been targeted and then fired or reprimanded into silence for being GC. It's high time the bullies got a taste of their own medicine.

This post needs more exclamation marks.

Especially if she refused to walk back on what she'd posted. Judging by her woe-is-me video, I suspect she wouldn't back down and very much believes that what she posted to the author was her right to say so. She really should've better read the social media usage clause in her contract.

It's a difficult question though, thinking more about it. I do think the problem she had was implying she would do this with bookshop books and doing it on a platform she'd so heavily linked to her employer.

Is there something about the ripping up that's particularly offensive? Because people on here are saying it's awful to destroy books, but surely most avid readers go through books quite quickly and don't keep them all. I suppose most get donated rather than destroyed, but would it be as bad if she had just said she'll bin them? I love books but bin the ones I don't like, or whose authors I disagree with. Just this weekend I've gotten rid of my Gaiman and Alice Munro books due to news about the authors.

Obviously the difference is I'm not tweeting Gaiman to tell him this in my capacity as a bookseller. I don't know what the contract said, but a blanket ban on opinions or tweeting at authors does seem a bit Draconian.

I think part of her problem is that she wasn't just an average employee who worked at Waterstones, and said something bad on social media. Her job was social media for Waterstones. Her job was to promote new books.
She bit the hand that fed her, it slapped her right down.
You don't have to be a genius to figure out don't say stupid stuff on social media if you job is social media.

Genuine question -- would you get the books back if Gaiman is found to be innocent? Or would you feel 'no smoke without fire'? (Don't want to derail the thread though!)

Aesthetic beauty doesn't trump other values though. I felt no guilt against aesthetic sensibilities about binning my Munro book. Although in fairness my books are mostly battered and not very beautiful anyway....

Tilly has locked her twitter account down now.

Tilly's account might be in hiding, but replies to the original post are still there.
This interaction really tickled my funny bone.

Give over scolding. There is plenty of varied opinion on this thread most of which disagrees with attempts to silence women

Something bad didn't happen to Tilly.

Tilly committed gross misconduct and got fired as a result.

Define transphobia, and please explain exactly how Christina was 'transphobic' given her beliefs are now protected by UK law.

If Tilly stood in the entrance to Waterstones and was shouting into the street that a particular author was bad and people shouldn't buy their books, do you think she'd still be employed by them? Some people seem to think that just because she did it online that it doesn't matter.

@ColinMyWifeBridgerton I doubt there’s a blanket ban on interacting with authors and I’m sure Tilly has previously tweeted “loved your latest book” or “I found this one hard going, preferred your debut” or “I disagree with your premise in this book”

But saying that you will destroy a product that you are employed to sell, directly at the producer of that? No.

Back to my analogy - if I am an Asda employee replying to an artisan cola brand that we just started stocking saying “I tried this, it’s not for me” vs “I’m going to tip all cans of FancyCola down the sink” I would expect a different outcome