I'm Back Baby!

Sent via email this morning after reading Tom's last post:

Dear Waterstones,

Just a quick note to say that I will never set foot in one of your stores again.

By firing Joe Gordon for the kind of mild critical banter we all engage in with regard to the workplace you have helped contribute to the current pervading culture of pointless petty nastiness in the workplace, and struck a blow against common decency.

It is difficult to fathom the kind of mindset one would have to be in possession of to fire an employee for joking that his boss is “evil”.

Is it not bad enough that retail staff in this country have to put up with long hours and appalling wages without having to fall victim to the egos of the kind of talentless, vindictive, self serving cretins you generally find in management positions up and down the country?

We have come to a point in this country where companies such as your own are routinely employing the kind of people who tell you can’t have your birthday off just because they can, school bullies with a clipboard, as incapable of motivating without the use of fear and intimidation as they are of getting people to touch their private parts.

As a result of Waterstones policy of employing such sub-standard people, your company’s claim to be a champion of freedom of speech will, in due course, become a national joke.

I would suggest that by lightening up and not taking yourselves so seriously you may live longer, but that would hardly do for the rest of us. You are after all only a book shop, really, think about it, you are just a book shop.

What you have done to Joe Gordon is rotten. Think about that. You know it’s rotten and you also know it’s no way for adults to conduct themselves.

I will never buy anything from Waterstones or any associated firm again, I will not allow my daughter to do so and will encourage my wife and everyone else I know to boycott your stores until Joe Gordon is reinstated and provided with a full apology for his treatment.

I kind of feel as if you owe me an apology too.