The sales punk didn't like how he was treated, so he gets revenge by (threatening) to leverage his own personal network.
It's pretty unlikely this is some organized practice at Groupon.
Is the culture such that anything goes?
Are the systems that review performance of sales reps not catching up with this sort of behaviour?
Groupon allowed this to happen, and it's for Groupon to fix.
Firing the guy would be a knee jerk reaction that would not to me be the right one. Not firing him and doing nothing would be worse. The best answer is a blame-free full review of how this occurred, and how they can design their organisation and process to make it never occur again.
Sounds to me like it's a kid barely out of college who can't control his emotions and is having a pouty hissy fit. His emotional age obviously is not advanced enough to prepare him for sales.
If you want to blame anything, blame the culture (Web 2.0? SF? VC funded world?) that believes that younger is always better.
That said, if we were talking about hiring a node.js dev, and comparing a 22 year old vs. a 57 year old, would "I fail to see how this has anything to do with his age. There are great developers at all stages of life." be applicable as well? Or would it reasonable to make some generalizations while appreciating exceptions?
What might happen: front page of Reddit, followed by the guy being sacked shortly afterwards.
Had the rep instead said "maybe all this could be avoided if you would simply make the time to talk to me for 15 minutes on the phone tomorrow", it might be more cut-and-dry.
While this is unprofessional to say the least, I see no extortion or anything like it all as the wording states that this recourse is based on a past event and is not contingent on Trip's future actions at all. Also it is everyone's right to tell their friends if they think a place or a person sucks, that's part of what friends are for. And Andy doesn't say that he's going to write a bad review or have his friends write a bad review, he just says that he's going to tell his friends how Trip treated him. That doesn't mean that his friends will necessarily write reviews for him and because of that there is no guarantee of harm in any way.
What's most interesting to me about this whole situation (and the part that seems backwards) is the Trip's way of dealing with this. So okay, a Groupon employee wrote an angry letter to a restaurant owner that was 100% unprofessional and was probably understood by the restaurant owner to be a threat of defamation by the Andy's network of friends. Trip's response? To publicly post the letters to Facebook along with the Andy's name, cell phone number and other contact information so that everyone else that doesn't like Andy's immature letter can call him any time of the day to tell him how much of a jerk he is? It seems a bit much.
Trip's response letter was well written and had good advice but I believe it should have ended there. By making this whole thing public, Trip is really acting no more mature than Andy was when he wrote the offending letter. Not to mention that it could open Trip up to legal liability as I believe California has laws regarding the publication of private facts (e.g. Andy's cell phone number). Either way, I think this whole situation demonstrates a lot of immaturity on both sides.
I don't see how the offending employee doesn't get fired, but I think I would have given the boss a way to make me whole before going public.
What you suggest is more like extorting Groupon back by insisting on compensation for keeping quiet about the extortion -- instead of warning other businesses and customers about Groupon's criminal activities, and preventing it from happening to others in the future.
Obviously Sauce is not the only company who suffered from Groupon's extortion, and I'm sure Andy Johnston is not the only extortionist working at Groupon. Sauce keeping it under their hat in exchange for a free Groupon deal would be unethical and idiotic.
Groupon deals don't even work well, and Sauce already wanted nothing to do with them.
"Extortion is a criminal offense of unlawfully obtaining money, property, or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion."
"Which Kinds of Threats are Illegal? One common characteristic of extortion is the use of threats, that is, an express intention to inflict injury, loss, or some other bad consequence on another person."
I'm generally not a fan of laws banning blackmail, when the threat is not itself illegal. I find it odd that it would be perfectly legal for me to tell my neighbor's spouse that he is having an affair, or to request money from my neighbor, but it would be illegal for me to request money from my neighbor and promise to tell his wife about his affair if he declines. I'm not generally a big fan of Walter Block's approach to libertarianism, but this is his argument, and I do agree with it: http://mises.org/journals/jls/15_2/15_2_2.pdf.
The employer is paying the employee to provide a service according to rules that both parties agreed to when the employee was hired. Insisting that they show up on time isn't coercing the employee, since it's something they freely agreed to as a condition of their employment.
"Restaurant patrons couldn't threaten to leave a (only one) negative review if their service is poor."
The restaurant patron is paying to be served, so they wouldn't be getting something they're not already entitled to by threatening to leave a bad review.
"but it would be illegal for me to request money from my neighbor and promise to tell his wife about his affair if he declines."
The difference here is that you're trying to force your neighbor to give you something you're not entitled to (his money) by threatening to do something bad to him. It's different from the boss or restaurant patron, who are demanding services that they've paid for.
All in all, it seems like just another bad PR day at Groupon.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extortion
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_racket
> "Extortion is a criminal offense of unlawfully obtaining money, property, or services from a person, entity, or institution, through coercion."
> "In the United States, extortion may also be committed as a federal crime across a computer system, phone, by mail or in using any instrument of interstate commerce."
http://www.quickanddirtytips.com/business-career/legal/what-...
> "What is Extortion? The use of threats to extract money from people is a crime in the United States..."
> "Which Kinds of Threats are Illegal? One common characteristic of extortion is the use of threats, that is, an express intention to inflict injury, loss, or some other bad consequence on another person. The threat has to be sufficiently plausible and imminent that it could convince a reasonable person to give in to the blackmailer’s demands. In addition, there has to be some evidence that the threat was actually made for the purpose of obtaining money or property."
http://www.orbankruptcy.com/newsletters/criminal-law/federal...
> "A person commits the federal offense of extortion if he or she transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any demand or request for ransom or for a reward for the release of a kidnapped person, any threat to kidnap or injure another person, or any threat to injure the property or reputation of another person or to accuse another person of a crime with the intent to extort."
Now that one specifically mentions that threats to injure persons, property or reputation qualify as extortion when done to get money from someone.
Here is the actual federal law:
http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/875
> "Whoever, with intent to extort from any person, firm, association, or corporation, any money or other thing of value, transmits in interstate or foreign commerce any communication containing any threat to injure the property or reputation of the addressee or of another or the reputation of a deceased person or any threat to accuse the addressee or any other person of a crime, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than two years, or both."
It seems very clear that that is what has happened here.
But if this form of threat by a Groupon employee to extract money from people is not extortion, what is the subtle difference that would enable such threats to be considered non-criminal?