Subway employee fired for lauding cop-killing. Rise of incivility or just poor filters?

A Mississippi woman was fired from her job when she used the Internet to revel in the shooting deaths of two police officers.

|
Lee Celano/REUTERS
Policemen bow their heads in prayer under images of officers Liquori Tate and Benjamin Deen during a vigil service for the two officers who were killed during a traffic stop, in Hattiesburg, Mississippi May 11, 2015.

The case of a Subway sandwich shop worker – who used Facebook to celebrate the shooting deaths of two Hattiesburg, Miss., police officers – demonstrates the riskiness of uncivil or hateful communication, and the importance of thinking before posting comments online.

Sierra “C-Babi” McCurdy, of Laurel, Miss., was fired from her job at a Subway restaurant after she cheered the murders of Hattiesburg Police Officers Benjamin Deen and Liquori Tate who were killed in the line of duty during a routine traffic stop Saturday night, according to The Clarion Ledger.

Ms. McCurdy’s posts on Facebook read: “2 police officers was shot in hattiesburg tonight…GOT EM,” according to media. “We can turn this [expletive] into Baltimore real quick ... Police take away innocent people lives everyday now & get away w/ it, [expletive] them ... no mercy.” She appeared to be wearing a Subway employee uniform in an accompanying photo.

Subway was quick to respond, firing McCurdy immediately, a spokesperson told The Clarion Ledger. Ms. McCurdy’s social media accounts all appear to have been deleted or locked since the incident.

According to the 2014 Civility in America survey, “The overwhelming majority of each generation perceives a civility problem in America. More than nine in 10 of each adult generation — Millennials, Gen Xers, Boomers, and the Silent Generation — believe that civility is a problem, with most leaning toward it being a major problem. The generations are also in agreement that incivility has reached crisis proportions in America.”

The annual survey is conduct among American adults by Weber Shandwick and Powell Tate, in partnership with KRC Research, since 2010.

The same survey found that a majority in each generation said that the Internet and social media were partially responsible for growing incivility. (Among other top factors cited were politicians, government officials, and "America's youth.")

And social media is an increasingly important platform for communication, as Americans spend up to 40 minutes per day on Facebook, and more and more companies gravitate to Facebook and Twitter for customer service. Many companies' Twitter and Facebook pages have taken on the role of complaint forums. According to a poll by Edison Research, 42 percent of consumers expect a 60-minute response time to social media complaints.

Social media expert Batya Maman, CEO of social-media consultancy firm Social Connect, says in an interview that people have lost their social filters.

Ms. Maman says that users need to take greater care with the content of their online postings.

“Today, people feel very comfortable talking about everything in every subject – what they eat, what they think, what they love, who are their neighbors, what they see in the bus, in the train, what’s going on in the airplane, everywhere on social media,” she says. “People really need to start thinking about what’s going on because if [McCurdy] was posting the same thing not wearing the uniform she wouldn’t get in trouble.”

Ms. Maman recommends that every business build a social media policy of “what to do and what not to do” for employees. She also recommends that employers pay more attention to the social media feeds of potential employees.

“Talking about a social media policy while interviewing people is one of the best ways to make sure you know who you are hiring,” she adds. “Because these days what you post on social media is who you really are. Five years ago or three years ago it was fake but now it’s becoming more real because people see everyone else posting everything and they follow them. It’s become a part of people’s reality that whatever you post online, that’s who you really are.”

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

QR Code to Subway employee fired for lauding cop-killing. Rise of incivility or just poor filters?
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2015/0512/Subway-employee-fired-for-lauding-cop-killing.-Rise-of-incivility-or-just-poor-filters
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe