Should Fresno Airport Workers Have Been Fired for Posting Video Made on the Job?

Dancing on the job and posting it on social media gets police officers love and attention.

But for a group of workers at Fresno Yosemite International Airport, their popular video post of them dancing and goofing off inside and outside the terminal got them fired.

The video, originally posted Jan. 24 on social media platforms TikTok and Twitter, shows the group of ramp service agents on the tarmac and at the top of an escalator while dancing, pretending to use traffic cones as megaphones and hiding in baggage carts.

Officials at the Fresno Yosemite International Airport described the video as “inappropriate behavior in the work environment.”

Tommy Chan, one of the workers shown in the video, said he doesn’t think their post rises to a fireable offense.

“I don’t really feel like we should’ve been fired. Maybe suspended for a bit,” said Chan, who had worked at the airport for 1 1/2 years. “We did the video toward the end of our shift when our work was already done and there was no other work to do. We had a couple of minutes to spare.

“A lot of people saw the video and left a lot of positive comments.”

Chan said the 15-second video took no more than 35 minutes to shoot.

And certainly, he and his co-workers never thought they would get fired for it.

They’d seen ramp service agents at other airports post similar videos, as well as videos of police officers and other emergency personnel dancing on the job and being glorified in news reports.

“We were just thinking, ‘We can make a video that’s better and catch some attention,’” Chan said. “There was no harm.”

Within a couple of weeks, the video had generated more than 200,000 views and shared and commented on thousands of times.

It eventually caught the attention of Flight Services & Systems, the company that employed the workers.

Chan said the group was informed Saturday that they’d been suspended.

On Tuesday, they were notified they were fired.

“We were shocked,” Chan said.

Airport’s reasoning

Why did the video cost these workers their jobs?

For one, Flight Services & Systems officials told the group that they’d used company equipment inappropriately and did so while on the clock, according to Chan.

In a statement, officials at FAT (the Fresno airport code; FYI was formerly called Fresno Air Terminal) became “aware of a series of unauthorized videos filmed by airline ground handling contract employees during the course of their work shift at FAT and circulating on social media.

“In the videos, the employees’ inappropriate behavior in the work environment displays poor judgment and does not reflect the conduct expected of individuals working at FAT.

“The company employing these individuals has taken corrective action concerning the parties involved, as well as instructed the removal of the unauthorized videos from social media. FAT is working with the company to retrain its staff on appropriate behavior and to prevent these types of events in the future.”

Chan said he thought the firing was hypocritical, because he said the head of airport social media told them, “Nice video.”

Aiport spokeswoman Vikkie Calderon, who overseas FAT social media, denied that ever happened.

“None of our team would’ve done that,” Calderon said.

The next chapter

Chan said he and his co-workers have enjoyed the attention their video has received but are disappointed to have lost their jobs.

“It sucks this happened,” Chan said. “I liked the job. Met some cool people.

“I guess if I had anything else to say, I’d say keep watching.”

Watching?

Yes, Chan said the group has been asked to shoot a TikTok video ad for a local spa company.

“When one door closes,” Chan said. “We’ll see what this leads to. I don’t regret making the video.”

———

©2020 The Fresno Bee (Fresno, Calif.)

Visit The Fresno Bee (Fresno, Calif.) at www.fresnobee.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.