Two months ago, an Alaska Airlines flight attendant was fired over a viral TikTok twerking video she made while in uniform on board their aircraft.
She’d worked for the airline for six months, and filmed the 20-second dance clip early in the morning while waiting two hours for pilots, and was celebrating the end of her new hire probationary period. The video carried the caption: “Ghetto Till I Die, Don’t Let the Uniform Fool You.” That left her only with her lingerie and dessert business. And she asked,
Can’t even be yourself anymore without the world being so sensitive. What’s wrong with a little twerk before work?
Now she’s considering suing saying that her “dance Was ‘geared towards the urban community’ and thus the termination was racially-motivated.
However, the policy she was fired under is not discriminatory on its face. Choosing to undertake prohibited behavior doesn’t get a free pass simply because the intended audience consists of members of a protected class. And the flight attendant has said that wasn’t true anyway, she was doing the twerk for herself, to ‘celebrate the end of her probationary period’ and because she was bored during a delay.
I am not an attorney, let alone an ambulance chasing one that seeks not to win at trial but to leverage a settlement. Nonetheless, I am confident that any such suit is going nowhere. That doesn’t mean it won’t come, because it’s a news hook! She could even catapult the attention into the creation of a meme coin if she’s lucky. The SEC even now says that meme coins aren’t securities, so are outside their regulatory purview…
In the eyes of the company and/or the customers, she damaged the brand. Buh bye!
Copernicus called: you’re not the center of the universe.
(from Frasier)
Is that Dank Demoss?
In Gary’s January 14 post about this, Ms. Diala sought support via GoFundMe. Now, Gary sites PYOK’s speculation that she ‘might’ sue for discrimination. If anyone believes her, she probably should proceed with such a case. After all, she did lose her job–you know, the thing that pays for our rent, food, healthcare, etc., usually.
And no, this isn’t an ‘ambulance chaser’ type of suit–it’s not a personal injury case (that was silly, Gary). If she proceeds, she’s going to likely have to pay a retainer (which is not cheap, $10K+ to start), and it could take months or years for her to recover anything, if she does at all–maybe just more lawyers fees and court costs. Even if you think of her as a ‘grifter,’ and she may be, this is our system, however flawed, and we can let the courts decide.
Let’s be clear though, it’s an employment dispute, and she likely will argue retaliation by her employer on the basis of race. De facto discrimination occurs in practice (which she may have to prove), while de jure discrimination occurs by law (‘on it’s face’ as Gary says on the company ‘rule’ violation that lead to her ouster for posting while in uniform).
You don’t have to be an attorney to have an opinion on this (some will go straight to racial animus–please resist that urge), or to experience it such attempts at ‘controlling’ speech. Personally, I would not have done this, or wear any ‘pins’ on my uniform, if I wore one.
It may be reasonable for an employer to prohibit employees who are acting as agents of the company from acting, expressing, and speaking in certain ways while on the job. Or, it may be that company sought to ‘make an example of her’ (deterrence), and on racial grounds. Through ‘discovery,’ we may find that her supervisor or management did say some stupid things that will harm their defense. If so, I suspect they’d settle before this becomes any bigger than it has to.
Apparently she’s too dumb to realize a large national brand would not want to be seen as “ghetto.” Working at a 7/11 is more her speed it would seem. I’m sure in her world twerking to a ghetto theme is a major life accomplishment. No different if someone was twerking claiming to be “trailer park.”
@George N Romey — The company would also want to deny an employee from say, performing and recording ‘awkward Roman-era hand gestures’… (Elon did a few, recently, even if ‘in jest’). Companies would be right to want to prevent that vile association, especially while someone is in uniform and on-site. But this incident does regrettably have a racial component, so unless our courts are going to ignore that, and they may, she’s still got a potential case, however silly it may be that this has happened. I think the real winners so-far are folks like Gary, who are gonna post about this for months–Go Gary! Go Gary! Woo! Milk it!
6 months on the job , and she still doesn’t know any better that Corporate doesn’t have a sense of humor or is extremely adverse to liability? don’t do silly stuff if you can’t afford to lose the job.
If you’d like to experience an elevated and (most likely) twerk-free experience in the sky, please choose Delta.
@Matt — Bah! You got me, again! It’s a one-trick pony, but it’s the best pony around. Keep climbing!
Ghetto Guttermuppet
Maybe if her ass was a little smaller. Someone could get hurt with that thing flying around.