Why You Can't Fire The Worst Employee Ever
What happens when an employee comes down with COVID-19 hysteria.
Jill Groeschel began working for Trader Joe’s in 2014, according to court documents. Her shift began at five in the morning and ended around midday.
“For the better part of her tenure, Groeschel was, by most accounts, an exemplary employee. She consistently earned the company’s highest performance rating on her semiannual evaluations between January 2015 and June 2021,” says circuit judge Dana M. Douglas.
Circuit judge Andrew S. Oldham paints a different picture.
Groeschel “was the sort of employee who haunts the nightmares of HR managers everywhere,” according to Oldham.
“She berated co-workers and customers with profanity-laden screeds, threatened the lives of her co-workers with heavy equipment, and was the focus of at least a dozen employee complaints. Her conduct obviously violated Trader Joe’s at-will employment policy. Yet the National Labor Relations Board [NLRB] held that Groeschel’s firing was unlawful— because this California-based, famously-progressive grocery chain harbored some secret animus against people who took COVID seriously? Astonishingly, the majority agrees.”
A BAD CASE OF BOOMER MIND VIRUS
Groeschel’s troubles began in early 2020, when Trader Joe’s adopted COVID-19 protocols: Mask mandates, plexiglass barriers between the cashiers and customers, etc.
Groeschel did not object to such measures. Rather, she enthusiastically “advocate[d] for stronger health and safety protections,” according to Douglas.
In September 2020, Groeschel confronted a customer about violating the in-store mask mandate The customer claimed a medical exemption, and later allegedly “mocked Groeschel for attempting to enforce the mask policy. In response, Groeschel told the customer that she was not welcome in the store and called her selfish for refusing to wear a mask.”
In January 2021, Groeschel pushed to post mask signage on the Trader Joe’s entrances. Her superior declined.
That superior once “encouraged Groeschel to approach all coworkers with positivity,” to which Groeschel offered a bizarre retort, saying she “respects all of her coworkers but finds the company’s expectation that she react positively to racist remarks made in her presence an inappropriate expectation,” according to Douglas.
In October 2021, Groeschel allegedly “ignored a customer in line who did not have a mask on,” Douglas writes, citing Trader Joe’s internal logs.
In other words: Groeschel appears to be one of the many Americans whose mind was permanently melted by the COVID-19 lockdowns.
Following the death of George Floyd, an account under the name of “Jill Groeschel” posted a nearly 10-minute video to YouTube explaining her “personal story as a privileged white woman.”
In the video, she recounts her love story with a man named Solomon: “I, a white woman of privilege from Santa Monica, and he, a black man from Compton.”
Groeschel adds: “What I can say, is that, this is our fight. This is the time for every single one of us to stand up and say, ‘The treatment of blacks by the police is unacceptable.’”
“You know, we all have been privileged by the color of our skin, white privilege, white privilege. Does that make you uncomfortable? White privilege? It makes me uncomfortable. It makes me really uncomfortable, but I’m going to use that discomfort to take action.”
Groeschel reminds me a bit of Robert Dorgan, the middle-aged crossdresser suspected of shooting up his son’s hockey game on Monday.
I’ll let Geoffrey Ingersoll, Daily Caller Editor-at-Large, explain Dorgan’s history.
“He changed his name to ‘Roberta Esposito,’ so he was not only transgender; he was transracial. He called himself a Republican, followed several large GOP accounts, but he also harassed them nonstop over transgender issues. He was a prolific reply guy whenever anyone questioned trans ideology … He apparently had both SS and Totenkopf tattoos, so a real Nazi enthusiast. Not unusual for hardcore motorcycle enthusiasts though, which Dorgan apparently was. He was also a big fan of Nick Fuentes (except for his hands, which he frequently said Fuentes should surgically alter) and InfoWars. Dorgan was also very clearly a gym rat. Many images of him in dresses also feature him busting out the ol’ biceps.”
Dorgan, like Groeschel, had a weak memetic immune system. Both were utterly infected with idea-viruses: transgenderism, transracialism, COVID-19 angst, racial angst.
Dorgan and Groeschel appear to be of the same generation. Children’s access to social media and the internet provokes the most panic, for good reason. But memetic contagion poses a grave threat to boomers, too, who have arrived to the Information Age gloriously unprepared for what awaits them.
Anyhow, back to Trader Joe’s.
WHY WAS GROESCHEL FIRED?
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