Conduct unbecomming

I'm on both sides of the fence on this one. Did you hear about the CRA (that's Canada Revenue Agency for those of you who aren't being fleeced by the Canadian tax authorities) employee who was terminated for creating a game?

In short the story goes like this. David S. Gallant worked at the CRA's call centre developed a game called I get this call everyday supposedly a parody on his day job. Though the CRA isn't mentioned in the game, many of the reports make that connection (after all, nobody should be asking for your Social Insurance Number other than the tax agencies. I haven't played the game but its an interaction between a call centre agent (you) and a fictitious caller. Your role is to obtain some information from this caller who seems rather dense. You win if you can get the caller to agree to call you back.

The reason I said that I'm on the fence of this one is, in this particular case, I really can't see the reason for the dismissal. But say, I owned a car showroom and I had a number of car salespeople working for me and, suppose, one of the salesmen wrote a game making fun of the interaction between car buyers (my customers) and my business. Car salesmen are easy to make fun of but I may take some offence and approach the salesperson to see if they're really that unhappy with their job. Of course, this is their opinion and they have a right to it. It's what they do outside the employment which I pay them for. But on the other hand, people will associate that person with my particular showroom and they may add a connection to infer that the game simulates the interaction that may happen at my establishment. And so, I may terminate them.

But the CRA is a government agency. We all make fun of them. They run an established monopoly. There's absolutely no way that that particular game would make them any more unpopular. They're not in the business to win customer loyalty. Nobody has any option but to deal with them. And, in addition to that, we're not idiots. We'll see the parody in the game and move on. Perhaps it's true that the agency's customer service shop runs like that, and perhaps not. I've interacted with them and found them extremely helpful and polite. In the game they're shown to have the patience of Job, and I would agree with that too. Do they have some customers who are somewhat slow? I'm sure they do as they also have customers who are very sharp. And we wouldn't expect every customer service agent in a call centre to love every call. Nobody (perhaps a few do) loves every single minute of their job. There are highs and lows and perhaps there's nothing wrong making a parody of the lows. That's how comedians work, by seeing the odd situations and expanding on them.

I wish David well. Just like Ahmed Al-Khabaz who was expelled from Dawson College after finding a security flaw in one of the applications. He has received offers to continue his schooling and better still, find a job after graduating. Hopefully this opens a lot of doors (don't know which ones) for David.

See:
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2013/01/30/revenue_canada_worker_fired_for_his_online_customer_service_game.html