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

Honestly I would get the Norse Myths one back, probably wouldn't bother about the others. If the accusations really did come out to be completely baseless I'd happily drop the opinion, I don't think there's no smoke without fire against the evidence - but my initial inclination is to believe accusations (in general, not just in this case). It's not even just a moral stance, it's also that I feel instant revulsion to anyone who harms women in this way, and I don't want to see their name every day in my own home.

This reminds me a little of William Sitwell, who was forced to resign as editor of Waitrose Food magazine (I think he was almost certainly fired but he was allowed to make it look like a resignation). He hadn't done anything bad on social media, but he'd written a rude email in response to a freelance pitch in which he slagged off vegans. The freelancer then made it public.

Some people feel he was treated harshly, but if you edit a food magazine for Waitrose, you can't go round attacking people who might be Waitrose's customers, even in an email. (He's done OK for himself since, anyway.) He was probably on a freelance contract rather than a member of staff.

Generally, I think bringing your employer or client into disrepute is a no-no, and this woman will have had a clause on appropriate social media use in her contract.

Compare and contrast with Maya Forstater, whose employer actively encouraged staff to express robust opinions and then sacked her for saying that humans can't change sex.

I did feel a bit uncomfortable reading the OP of this thread. I don't think anyone should be fired for believing in gender ideology. I thought unless she's said something really heinous then Waterstones and this author are no better than TRAs cancelling GC women.

So I searched out what she said and I'm still on the fence as to whether I think this is a sackable offence rather than something that merits a stern warning. Obviously though I don't know Waterstones' social media policy or if there is more to her firing than just this one tweet.
I assume a GC bookseller threatening to destroy books by Shon Faye or Juno Dawson would be treated the same.

I also don't think it's fair of her to blame Christina Dalcher for her sacking. The screenshot I posted yesterday shows someone else tagging Waterstones. She seems to imply that CD contacted Waterstones demanding she be sacked, but we really don't know what happened.

I think she looks a bit silly talking about Waterstones being worried about upsetting CD and her measly 10k followers when the issue is that she, Tilly, tweeted out something that made her look bad, using her own name and photo and stated in her profile where she worked. It wasn't just CD and her fans that would potentially be upset, or put off shopping in Waterstones but anyone who doesn't want to feel judged by staff when buying books.

I do feel some sympathy for her. I'm guessing she got caught in an online bubble where you can get away with anything if you shout "trans rights!" This was probably a moment of foolishness where she didn't think about any possible repercussions, and now she's digging her heels in because it's better to say she lost her job for defending trans people than for a moment of stupidity.

that would be my guess too. But, obviously Waterstones are not going to be commenting on social media, talking about a private matter for obvious reasons - to protect themselves and their former employee.
I feel for the subject, losing your job sucks and this is a crappy economy to be jobhunting in. If I was her friend I'd advise her to replace the video with a bland statement reflecting only the facts that she would want a future employer to see. So, maybe a dignified absence of comment, would be the best she could do there, from a jobseeking perspective.

Do we even know if she was really sacked? I've said elsewhere that as long as the employer followed legal processes, I'm OK with it.

I'm sure we haven't heard the end of this.

I used to have an office in the same corridor as HR - we all had our doors open so you could hear what was going on.

I swear 90% of what they did was employees chatting shit on social media.

It was just endless - people saying something negative about the employer TBH this was not hard and being stunned to discover this was against the T&Cs of their employment.

As a load of Tilly's job was social media, she should have known the social media policy by heart. But it seems she was in a righteous bubble where being nasty to TERFs was OK.

I wonder if people like Tilly live in a bit of a bubble thinking most normal people agree with their beliefs? Because so many institutions and corporations support trans ideology so loudly.

In reality those of us with gender ideologist friends will change the subject or mute them when it comes up because so many of us still don't feel safe enough to speak about reality at work or on social media under our own names.

I think the Tillys of this world get so caught up in being righteous that they fail to read between the lines and notice how many people aren't proclaiming their special beliefs, despite the obvious benefits that come with doing so.

I've been thinking about this woman's behaviour re. books by an author she considers to be a terf and the thread about the 'TERF' play, especially since it appeared it might be cancelled. I've not been back and reread it but, in my recollection, there weren't many post celebrating that. A few found it amusing. Lots though wanted it to go ahead, they didn't want it torn up and binned.

That's the difference right there. We'd like these batshit ideas to be out there and be seen, we don't think they stand up to any kind of scrutiny and have been snuck in under false pretenses. We've got MRAs, TRAs and misogynists on here on the regular and nobody is trying to ban them or shut them up. We let their words stand, "Operation Let Them Speak".

On the other hand, you've got people applying Terf Blocker so they literally cannot see anything that might be disagreeable. You will get instabanned from the treddits for one post, and apparently nobody has even bothered to read what JKR posted, they all had a meeting and decided she's a baddie and that's it.

It's a joke really. But we're in an echo chamber (as we are frequently reminded, in the actual echo chamber)

It's so fucking cringey
I used to love Mary beard until she did the same thing
Talk about someone you'd assume would know better/have more dignity

First Rule of Social Media Club : You can post whatever you want.
Second Rule of Social Media Club : Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

I've done HR work. I have seen worse things done but they kept their job. But these were often a one off event. And very often had something bigger behind it. Like marriage breakup or child suicide/attempted suicide, parent dying. Big things that are not regular.
I suspect but will obviously never know, there is more by this woman that makes her a liability. Itll probably come out at some point.

If it helps you to get your head around what has happened here, imagine a bookshop employee saying on social media that they were ripping up and authors work because they are Muslim or black.

I know it's taking a while to sink in but gender critical beliefs are protected in exactly the same way as being Muslim is.

It's almost certainly gross misconduct, but in my book this would be at most a final warning kind of thing.

I remember in a job a guy (who was not competent) got insta-sacked because he did a gross misconduct thing (he sent some of the company source code to his personal email address so his non-useless cousin could help him with his work, if you can believe it).

My boss wanted rid of him because not competent, and the gross misconduct thing was totally his own doing, but it let the company bin him off in an orderly fashion with no comeback.

Interesting post on Twitter. I wonder what happened between 2021 and now?

I looked at the Instagram. Seems it was only a weekend job? But she also appears to have been fired while on holiday? That's not fantastic, tbh.

Lovenothate · Yesterday 19:21

Sorry but you’re celebrating a trans phobic author getting someone fired for calling her out on her hate?!

No, none of the above. Can you explain what she's said, or written, which is transphobic? What hate has she perpetrated? Also, as has been pointed out many times here, it was Waterstones which sacked her.

I can't get upset for her, she threatened to ruin somebody else's living and has lost her own, as a result. She's an unpleasant bully and has seen the consequences rebound upon her.

She seems to have shut down the X thread which includes her wail. Perhaps the unsupportive comments upset her - but what did she expect? She tried to cancel an author because of their GC views and failed to conceal where she worked (an elementary mistake) so she got sacked. But I daresay she expected everyone to support 'poor little me' because she was standing up for transfolk and the nasty author says that Transwoman does not = woman. Nasty shock for the poor wee mite.
Edited as got my pronouns muddled!

Does she have a case for taking them to tribunal for discriminating against her philosophical beliefs? Since it was just a social media post and she didn't actually destroy any of her employer's property, that we know of.

I think Tilly will have to happy finding an activist book retailer to work for . I doubt that they will be happy in a work place where books by many people more abhorrent than the author they were trying to shame are being sold.

Tilly has not shown that they cannot be a grown up about interacting with authors that Tilly disagrees with.

She can try, I'll even donate to a crowd funder.

But I think she will fall down in the supposed to be selling books thing. Not tearing them up and putting them in the bin thing.

Halle bloody lujah Waterstones back in my good books - pwahahaha

To be honest I don’t think ‘Tilly loves books’ after all. My mum is an avid reader and yes there are some books she doesn’t enjoy but I don’t ever recall her putting them in the bin. She passes them on to others, donates them etc etc. Disagree with authors views, criticise their writing style or content all you want but destroying them is not what people who love books do. If I were Waterstones I wouldn’t want Tilly representing the main product I sell.

Too bloody right 🥳

I confess that I give away good novels, but if I feel a novel is badly written and is a waste of time and effort and is a damp squib at the end, I put them in the recycling to spare other people the bother.

yeah she should totally crowd fund a tribunal if she thinks Waterstones have a case to answer.