“An employee was recently fired by his company for tweeting a tasteless joke about running over a cyclist. Surely what we do or say in our private lives is no business of our employers? Many like to think so, yet the days when we could draw a strict line between the professional and the personal are gone. It was we who insisted that companies no longer just sell us stuff but be ‘good corporate citizens’, we who have insisted they live up to certain values – be nice to their workers, commit themselves to Fairtrade and in general ‘do no evil’. So, to protect their credibility they, in turn, insist their staff uphold those values, too. We can’t have it both ways. If we want companies to stand for something other than just making money, then the ‘ethical spotlight’ we turn on them will be turned on us, too”. (Julian Baggini, The Independent) 

I don’t agree. The fellow is a twerp, amd has neither good taste nor judgment. But what he did has nothing to do with the way he does his job. If it had affected the company snd its profitability directly, that would be a different matter, but what an employee does in his spare time is still no business of the boss, despite the views of journalists. In effect, the boss has gratuitously injected himself and the company into the story, and thus sort-of associated the company with the tweet. Not wise. Maybe he wanted to get rid of the employee anyway, but this is not the right reason for, or way, of doing it.