PrintLet's welcome Equity Prime Mortgage LLC of Atlanta Georgia to the Karma Café (updated)
Update to “Let's welcome Equity Prime Mortgage LLC of Atlanta Georgia to the Karma Café.”
A couple of months after this article was published in June 2020, EPM filed a lawsuit against Melissa Rolfe and also Marjorie Taylor Greene’s campaign for allegedly “peddling the false narrative” that the company fired her for “fighting for her stepson.” This suggests that EPM may have published its purported reasons for dismissing Rolfe not to “virtue signal” any “woke” corporate values, but instead to contradict Rolfe’s and the Greene campaign’s statements. Rolfe’s attorney Lin Wood tells a contradictory story but, as I wasn’t there, I don’t know which side is telling the truth and will not speculate.
I do not apologize, however, for my initial perception of EPM’s actions because the onus was on EPM to precede its statement with material such as, “We would normally not under any circumstances publish our reasons for discharging an employee but, as the employee said some things about us, we need to set the record straight.” EPM’s side of the story, as presented without this context, therefore looked to me exactly what I wrote that it looked like. As this additional information has come to my attention, though, I believe that fairness requires this new information to be available to AT’s readers.
"Cancel culture" means that social justice bullies (SJBs) take political disagreements beyond their proper venues of social media, blogs, campaigns, and of course the voting booth into other people's workplaces and private lives to destroy their careers and/or businesses. It is past time for the targets of such attacks, along with decent people throughout the country, to take the SJBs to the Karma Café, where everybody gets what he deserves in accordance with what Hindus call Dharma, or the Right Path. Equity Prime Mortgage LLC, the company that fired the stepmother of Atlanta police officer Garret Rolfe, and then used its Facebook page, Twitter account, and LinkedIn account to publicly disparage her, is the Karma Café's latest, but doubtlessly not the last, customer.
It's ironic that the person they fired is a human resources (H.R.) professional, almost all of whom will tell us nobody wants to hire somebody who badmouths a former employer, and nobody wants to work for an employer who badmouths a former employee, regardless of whether the stories they tell are accurate. Bringing on an employee who trashes former employers is like bringing home a dog that bit its former owners; if he did it to them, he could do it to you. The same goes for joining a business that publicizes its reasons for terminating somebody; if the employer did it to him, the employer could do it to you. This web page from the Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM) warns, in fact, against disclosing internally the reason for a termination, much less publishing it on the company's social media pages.
EPM, in fact, proclaimed self-righteously, "[I]t is imperative to maintain a safe working environment for all employees." No, EPM, if you can fire somebody and publish on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn various disparaging reasons — and I don't know, don't need to know, and don't care whether they are true, false, or somewhere in between — I would not feel safe working for you. That is my opinion.
The company's online reputation is already being ripped to shreds with one-star reviews, some with no explanation, some with crude insults, and others with "Back the Blue," in venues such as TrustPilot and Google. Yelp suspended reviews because the onslaught was due to the controversy rather than actual customer experiences. I do not believe that bad reviews with no explanation, crude insults, or slogans are effective. The only talking point we need, and all that prospective and current customers and employees need to know, is that the company published the fact that it terminated an employee, named the employee, and published derogatory reasons for doing so.
EPM has therefore, as I see it, stepped so far outside the boundaries of generally accepted civility and conduct that it deserves to go out of business within the year. If there is a consistent demand for mortgage loan origination services, then the demand ought to be distributed among other companies in the same business. They will accordingly need more workers to meet this demand, and EPM's people should be able to find employment with other companies.
The Karma Café has plenty of tables with no reservations needed for businesses and individuals that harm other people's livelihoods for disagreeing with them or not being sufficiently "woke." Who wants to be seated next?
Update (05-01-2021): A couple of months after this post was published in June 2020, EPM filed a lawsuit against Melissa Rolfe and also Marjorie Taylor Greene's campaign for allegedly "peddling the false narrative" that the company fired her for "fighting for her stepson." This suggests that EPM may have published its purported reasons for dismissing Rolfe not to "virtue-signal" any "woke" corporate values, but instead to contradict Rolfe's and the Greene campaign's statements. Rolfe's attorney Lin Wood tells a contradictory story, but, as I wasn’t there, I don't know which side is telling the truth and will not speculate.
I do not apologize, however, for my initial perception of EPM's actions because the onus was on EPM to precede its statement with material such as "We would normally not under any circumstances publish our reasons for discharging an employee but, as the employee said some things about us, we need to set the record straight." EPM's side of the story, as presented without this context, therefore looked to me exactly what I wrote that it looked like. As this additional information has come to my attention, though, I believe that fairness requires that this new information to be available to AT's readers.
Civis Americanus is the pen name of an American Thinker contributor who remembers the lessons of history and wants to ensure that our country never needs to learn those lessons again the hard way.
