Dan Leone, The Philadelphia Eagles, And The Art of Tact

[coryanotado]

Originally published at The Fast Money Round. You can comment here or there.

In the sports world today, this story from the Philadelphia Inquirer is making the blog rounds. To make a long story short, 6-year Philadelphia Eagles Game Day staffer Dan Leone was fired over the phone after making an off-the-cuff remark on his Facebook page about the firing of star safety Brian Dawkins.

“Dan is [expletive] devastated about Dawkins signing with Denver. . . Dam Eagles R Retarted!!”

I can only assume that the expletive removed from the Inquirer article was “fucking,” just to throw that out there. There are three points that need to be made here: one, watch what you put on Facebook; two, loyalty is sadly overrated; and three, there’s un je ne sais quoi needed when dealing with those both over you and under you.

One: Have we all forgotten that Facebook is a publicly-accessible website? Anyone can pop onto your Facebook page and view all your information, including your profile, your images, your videos, your wall posts and your 25 Things You Don’t Ever Need To Know About Me Ever memes, lest you change your settings. If you’re worried about creeper-types (predators, exes, bosses) looking around your Facebook (or even if you’re not, for that matter) then it would be best to go to this page and change your privacy settings.

Two: No one really cares how long you’ve been working somewhere. My dad was working at a car remanufacturing plant in Philadephia for over 25 years before they shut down the department he worked in, moved the plant to Texas and Mexico, and fired him. They gave him a chance to transfer to Texas with the plant, but he had a wife and family in the area and did not bother to transfer him to any other part of the company. Loyalty is sadly overrated. I worked with Dan for 2 years at Lincoln Financial Field, and he was the most loyal guy to the Eagles you could possibly work with. He loved the Birds, and if he couldn’t be on the field, then working at the stadium every week was better opportunity. Few companies nowadays really care if you’ve been loyal employees, and this really shows it.

Three: You’re all a bunch of assholes, anyway. Dan, c’mon. Remember a few years back when T.O. was in the news? What was in our report sheet? “If anyone asks you anything, tell them to talk to Public Relations or the Media Crew. We’re not allowed to comment.” We’re just humble employees. We show people where beer is and where the bathrooms are. We’re not allowed to publicly (very publicly, in Facebook’s case) allowed to talk about the company, free speech be damned. Rachel Vitagliano, I remember working with you. You were very nice. You understood when there were problems with workers. But this? This was silly. You NEVER fire someone over the phone. NEVER. You bring them in, you let them talk. It’s not like Dan had a stream of “FUCK THE EAGLES” like most of your fans do. It was one off-the-cuff, passionate (and God knows after all this shit with Dawkins and Tra Thomas and Donovan’s need for better players that you need passionate fans) response that easily went away. All this bad press you’re getting? Could have been settled if you weren’t such a cold, heartless bitch.

So, what have we learned? Shut the fuck up, lock your shit down, and don’t be a dick. Three rules that will make the world a better place.