Warning...you can get fired for having sex!

Can you believe this story? Harry Stonecipher, CEO of Boeing, "resigns" because the company found out he was having an affair with a female executive. Found out because someone in the company was able to access their emails. You can read about it in this Globe and Mail article or in this article from the Chicago Tribune.

In a nutshell, this guy has been having an affair with this woman since January. She didn't report to him, he didn't help her career. The company has no knowledge of whether or not they had sex on company property (whether an office or a jet). In fact, their internal investigation showed that there was no detrimental effect on the company whatsoever.

A quote from the Chicago Tribune article:

Certain aspects of the affair "reflected poorly on Harry's judgement and would impair his ability to lead the company going forward," said Lewis Platt, Boeing's board chairman, during a conference call this morning. "It was a judgment call about a violation of the code of conduct."
But in the Globe article, it states:

And now, even though Boeing acknowledges he didn't violate the ethics code, it isn't taking chances. "There were just some issues of poor conduct and judgment that we believe would impair his ability to lead," a spokesman said.
So...if there was no violation of the code of ethics...then what was the rationale behind the firing?

Frankly, I find the way it was discovered to be a greater ethical violation. Someone accessed their private emails and snitched them out (betcha it was a born-again, Bible-thumping puritanical, mind-everyone-else's-business Christian...just a hunch, but I betcha). I'd fire that person first.

As an aside:

It's funny that this kind of puritanical thinking happens in Muslim countries too. The US and Islamic countries...two-sides of the same coin. Ironic, eh?

'Course, the number of people killed by Islamic "terrorists" is nowhere near the number killed in Hiroshima or Nagasaki, but hey, they don't have nukes, so it will take 'em longer to catch up.


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