The medical device industry is not like the technology industry. There are far less-flashier senior executives – no Steve Jobs here – and no one rocks the boat (except maybe St. Jude CEO Daniel Starks).
That changed last week.
Meet Adam Smith. Until recently, he was chief financial officer at Vante, a medical device manufacturing company. But many of you may now know him as the medical device executive fired for berating a drive-thru worker at Chick-fil-A. Smith’s poorly thought out bullying was meant to be a protests against the Chick-fil-A CEO’s anti-gay stance.
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Now he’s out of a job.
The shift from would-be protestor to bully to unemployed CFO to, finally, an apologetic former CFO happened in a matter of days. Here’s the step-by-step timeline of everything that happened.
Aug. 1.
It is Chick-fil-A Appreciation Day and those who support Chick-fil-A CEO’s stand against gay marriage are supposed to eat at the restaurant.
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Smith, enraged by Chick-fil-A’s position, drives to the restaurant at 3605 E. Broadway in Tucson. He orders a water in the drive thru. He then berates the cashier, Rachel, by saying among other cringe-worthy lines: “I don’t know how you live with yourself and work here. I don’t understand it. This is a horrible corporation with horrible values. You deserve better.”
He posts the video and titles it, “Reduce $’s to Chick-Fil-A’s Hate Groups.”
His career is effectively over, he just doesn’t know it. (Below is a re-post of the original video which Smith took down)
“The main goal of supporting the gay community outweighed the collateral damage that Rachel became,” Smith would later say. “I literally saw Rachel as collateral damage.”
As only a whiff of feedback begins to trickle in he pulls the video off YouTube. But others had already copied and re-uploaded it. The video begins to go viral.
Aug. 2.
Smith, engulfed by an explosion on Twitter and other social media, goes back to the Tucson Chick-fil-A intending to apologize to Rachel. She will not see him.
Smith reports to Vante, which has been buried with threatening voicemails and e-mails, and tries to use the company’s equipment to create an apology video to Rachel. The company orders him to remain “radio silent.”
It’s important to keep this in mind. Vante is as a catheter equipment manufacturer. The marketing team must have been wholly unprepared to manage the public relations blowup related to a viral video.
The company finally announces at 5:02 pm they have fired Smith.
Vante regrets the unfortunate events that transpired yesterday in Tucson between our former CFO/Treasurer Adam Smith and an employee at Chick-fil-A. Effective immediately, Mr. Smith is no longer an employee of our company.
The actions of Mr. Smith do not reflect our corporate values in any manner. Vante is an equal opportunity company with a diverse workforce, which holds diverse opinions. We respect the right of our employees and all Americans to hold and express their personal opinions, however, we also expect our company officers to behave in a manner commensurate with their position and in a respectful fashion that conveys these values of civility with others.
We hope that the general population does not hold Mr. Smith’s actions against Vante and its employees.
Aug. 3
Smith makes his apology video.
His key quotes:
- “Rachel, I am so very sorry for the way I spoke to you on Wednesday. You handled my frustrating rant with such dignity and composure.”
- “The degree of reaction my video ended up having took me by surprise, obviously. There was a lot of passion expressed, and still is being expressed. Part of me is quite discouraged by the threats made to my family and former co-workers. … But another part of me is encouraged. If people can get this passionate about a guy being rude to a girl in a drive-through, how much more passion can we have for our fellow human beings whose basic rights are being threatened by corporations like Chick-fil-A. How much more passion can we channel toward fighting for equal rights — for all people, not just straight ones.”
- “No, I’m not in the closet as many comics suggested, but if I were, I’d be very proud to be. The reason why I said that I wasn’t gay was because I wanted to convey that you don’t have to be gay to be for gay rights.”
Easily more than 1 million people have seen Smith’s first video. About 175,000 have seen his apology.
Smith’s heart may have been in the right place, but berating and bullying an employee for her boss’ principles is bad form to say the least. And then uploading that for the whole world to see is a career-limiting move as he found out belatedly.
