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[LordBucket]

The scenario:
Bob has some previous work experience providing desktop support in a small office environment. He is hired by a small office to provide computer support. He receives $10/hr and his typical work day is spent doing a variety of activities: basic computer troubleshooting, installing software, converting between various file formats, teaching people in the office how to use excel, etc.

Several months later his employer asks him to acquire bids from 3-4 companies to have a website made for the company.

Cue the following conversation:


Bob: Oh, I can do that. I'll build you a killer website for $500

Employer: You can build websites?

Bob: Absolutely. I've been frelancing for years. Site design is something I do every couple months.

Employer: Great! Build me a website during your downtime between other tasks.

Bob: ...umm, again, that's freelance work for me. I do it on the side. I've actually built two sites on the side since I've been working here.

Employer: That's no problem. I don't mind if you do business on the side provided it doesn't interfere with your work here.

Bob: Ok, so...I'll build you a site for $500. Incidentally, that's a great deal. If you go through a web design company, you'll probably end up paying $1500 or more.

Employer: You're already my employee. Why should I pay you extra for this?

Bob: Because it's something I already do as freelance work. I charge for it. You're paying me $10/hour to do misc office support work. Building websites was never part of the job description here. If you expect me to do work above and beyond that, it's reasonable that I should be paid for it.

Employer: I hired you to be my computer guy. This is computer stuff.

Bob: But web design is a specific, high-level task that I do freelancing for, and it's not what I was hired to do here. Therefore if you want me to do it, you need to pay me to do it.

Employer: I disagree. You're my computer guy. We never specifically established that you'd do user training, but last week you taught my receptionist how to create formulas in excel. Why is this any different?

Bob: Well, for example, because you asked me just now to acquire bids from web design companies. So clearly this is something even you didn't expect me to do.

Employer: Only because I didn't realize it was something you could do. If I knew you could, I'd have just asked you to do it in the first place.

Bob: Well, you asked for bids, and here's the first bid: I'll build a site for you for $500. If you want competing bids I'll start researching that right now.

Employer: No, just build me the site.

Bob: No.

Employer: Ok, you're fired.

Employer then replaces Bob with another $10/hr employee, and pays $1500 to a dedicated web design company to build him a website.



Questions:

 * Did anyone behave unethically?
 * Did anyone behave stupidly?
 * Why?

[Tawa]

* Yes.
* Yes.
* This 'Employer' guy fired an employee for something he was never asked to do in the first place; the employer is clearly a computer/English-illiterate moron.

[i2amroy]

In my mind that would depend a lot on exactly what Bob's contract with the company says, and what the exact language says he was hired to do.

[Criptfeind]

I think they were both stupid (Unless bob wanted to get fired.) and unethical would depend on more specific information.

[XXSockXX]

In my mind that would depend a lot on exactly what Bob's contract with the company says, and what the exact language says he was hired to do.

This. It depends a lot on how clearly defined Bob's job is in his work contract. If it just says something that roughly means like "responsible for IT-related stuff", which I guess is likely in a rather small company, where everyone does a bit of everything, building the webpage might indeed be part of the job.

*No. (Probably, see explanation)
*Yes.
*It wasn't unethical of the employer to ask Bob to do the website. It wasn't really unethical of Bob to ask for some extra money for the website (except if he was hired as an all-purpose IT-guy as mentioned above). The employer was stupid for firing Bob, it would have been cheaper to pay him. Both are stupid for not trying to figure out another solution, like a temporary raise.

[martinuzz]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

How people themselves perceive what they are doing is not a question that interests me. I mean, there are very few people who are going to look into the mirror and say, 'That person I see is a savage monster'; instead, they make up some construction that justifies what they do. If you ask the CEO of some major corporation what he does he will say, in all honesty, that he is slaving 20 hours a day to provide his customers with the best goods or services he can and creating the best possible working conditions for his employees. But then you take a look at what the corporation does, the effect of its legal structure, the vast inequalities in pay and conditions, and you see the reality is something far different. - Noam Chomsky

I have to side with Bob on this one. Although I suppose legally, it would depend on how exactly Bob's contract looks like. Bob's line of reasoning, in that web-design is a specialist niche job (sure, any kid can build a website nowadays, but much less people can build a -good- website, for professional business purposes), combined with his very reasonable offer (assuming the statement that a web design company would charge much more is true), should not have cost him his job.

I'm just slightly unclear on the last part of the conversation. After Bob's offer of either making the site for $500, or continuing his assignment to search for competing bids, the employer says "no, just build me the site". That could be either interpreted as "No, I don't want you to look for competing bids, just build me the site for $500", or as "No, I don't want you to do either of that, I want you to make it without extra pay, as part of your regular job".
I assume you meant the latter, or Bob's subsequent "no" would be a product of miscommunucation.

Even then, that should be no reason to fire someone.

[Graknorke]

*Yes (Bob explicitly said that he was hired as misc office support support, not really the kind of "computer guy" who develops websites, like the employer thinks)
*Massively so
*Employer made unreasonable demands of Bob to do things that aren't his job to do, though it has nothing to do with whether or not he does it freelance as well. Bob is stupid because he was making stupid and irrelevant arguments instead of focussing on the fact that it's not his job to do. Employer also decided he'd rather assert some pointless authority and spend 3x the offer on a website from a dedicated designer.

Also, LW, Bob sure seems to end up in a lot of stupid arguments in your hypothetical scenarios.

[gigaraptor487]

*Yes
*Yes, firing a guy over $500 where he has already been useful?
* He is asking to do something outside of the business which is outside of employment contract. Therefore, he acted unethically because bob hasn't breached that agreement and stupidly because the employer doesn't realise this. Also, he got offered to have a website for a 1/3 of what he payed due to his stupidity. 

[olemars]

Web design is definitely not in the same category as "misc IT". Also once again glad I live somewhere with reasonable pay and employee protections.

edit: eliminate horrible typo.

[pisskop]

*No
*Yes
*I think that while it wasn't unethical to fire somebody for failing to contribute everything they had to their job, it was stupid to expect him to do it.  Yes, the employer lost money, and yes, he was clearly acting more on emotion than objectively, but the employees refusal to be pushed into the free work demonstarated a quality that is usually considered more undesirable than not in a 10$/hr job.

[nenjin]

Web design is definitely in the same category as "misc IT". Also once again glad I live somewhere with reasonable pay and employee protections.

No, it's not. I do general IT for my business, but I couldn't tell you step 1 about building a website, other than "Must know HTML/PHP/blahblahblah." It's a specific set of skills requires education, practice and execution.

Bob's employer thought he lucked out by hiring Bob and that he'd probably get to pocket the monies reserved for the website for himself. Ethically, I'd say his boss was in the wrong. Legally? There's a reason tons of states in the US aren't "Right to work" states.

[scrdest]

*Depends on the phrasing of the contract - if it was not in Bob's job description, firing him when there's no fault in him doing what IS in his job is not a good thing.
*Yes, the employer essentially wasted 1000$, plus the cost of looking for a replacement, plus the benefit of having someone willing to do cheap freelance work on hand. Bob's actions may be called stupid by some, but it's definitely ethical as far as I'm concerned.

[olemars]

Web design is definitely in the same category as "misc IT". Also once again glad I live somewhere with reasonable pay and employee protections.

No, it's not. I do general IT for my business, but I couldn't tell you step 1 about building a website, other than "Must know HTML/PHP/blahblahblah." It's a specific set of skills requires education, practice and execution.

Bob's employer thought he lucked out by hiring Bob and that he'd probably get to pocket the monies reserved for the website for himself. Ethically, I'd say his boss was in the wrong. Legally? There's a reason tons of states in the US aren't "Right to work" states.

I actually typooed. I did mean to write "definitely NOT".

[gigaraptor487]

Web design is definitely in the same category as "misc IT". Also once again glad I live somewhere with reasonable pay and employee protections.

No, it's not. I do general IT for my business, but I couldn't tell you step 1 about building a website, other than "Must know HTML/PHP/blahblahblah." It's a specific set of skills requires education, practice and execution.

Bob's employer thought he lucked out by hiring Bob and that he'd probably get to pocket the monies reserved for the website for himself. Ethically, I'd say his boss was in the wrong. Legally? There's a reason tons of states in the US aren't "Right to work" states.

I actually typooed. I did mean to write "definitely NOT".

Yeah I read that and thought that seemed ignorant.

[Orange Wizard]

I don't really have anything to contribute to the discussion, but I'd like to say that $10 per hour is pathetic.