The Transpiration Security Administration (TSA) is on a witch hunt… literally:
Here’s a situation for all you aspiring managers: If you were the boss at a U.S. government agency and one of your employees complained that she was afraid of a co-worker’s religious practices, what would you do?
Would it change your decision if the religion were Wicca, and the employee feared her co-worker because she thought she might cast a spell on her?
Here’s how the Transportation Security Administration handled it:
It fired the witch.
I thought it was illegal to fire somebody in the United States because of their religious practices. Oh yeah I forgot that rule only applies to private industry, it’s OK when the government fires people based on their religion. To be fair we should probably look into what specific religious practice lead to the co-worker filing a complaint. Maybe the witch was sacrificing a small animal at the airport:
The assistant director told her he was investigating a threat of workplace violence. He said that her former mentor in on-the-job training, officer Mary Bagnoli, reported that she was afraid of Smith because she was a witch who practiced witchcraft. She accused Smith of following her on the highway one snowy evening after work and casting a spell on the heater of her car, causing it not to work.
Or the co-worker is a complete fucking idiot, that was actually my second guess. It’s nice to know the tradition of an honest to goodness witch hunt hasn’t completely died off. Thor forbid if somebody were to practice a non-mainstream religion. Oh and this line made me chuckle:
And it sheds light on work life at the TSA, where the 40,000-plus public employees who keep bad people and bad things off of airplanes have started voting this month on whether to join a union.
Name one instance where a TSA operative was able to keep a bad people or thing off of an airplane. Since the establishment of the TSA it seems to be that bad things keep getting onto airplanes. Let us not forget the shoe bomber, underwear bomber, and of course the liquid bombers. All of them managed to get past the TSA security theater without any problem.
Oh, and bonus points to MSNBC for find a way to mention unions in a story that has absolutely nothing to do with unions. Real subtle.