Yikes.
The Quiet Part
An IT company called Arthur Grand Technologies is having its worst PR nightmare — and appears to be in full meltdown.
After users on social media spotted an incredibly racist job listing from the company, its website has been completely shut down without explanation, Vice reports.
At first glance, it appears like an ordinary job listing posted on the job site Indeed, until you get down to the “note” in the full description.
“Only Born US Citizens [White],” the note reads, “who are local within 60 miles from Dallas, Texas” And, in brackets: “[Don’t share with candidates.]”
Yeesh. Talk about saying the quiet part out loud.
The job listing has since been removed, but an archived version of it remains available.
Blaming the Patsy
The racist blunder blew up on social media, amplified by a thread on the r/WorkReform subreddit that received nearly 55,000 upvotes. Further scrutiny quickly spilled over to Twitter, where a screenshot of the listing garnered close to 100,000 likes.
Following the mass condemnation online, Arthur Grand addressed the job listing in a LinkedIn post, which has since been replaced with a new, cleaned-up version.
In the post, the IT company called the listing “offensive,” and scapegoated a former employee for the whole fiasco. This former employee, Arthur Grand claims, “took an existing posting and added discriminatory language, then reposted it through his own account,” as quoted by Vice.
The company added that it is taking legal action against the offending worker.
Differing Testimony
Furious LinkedIn users took issue with Arthur Grand’s version of events, however.
Many of them pointed to a screenshot purportedly depicting the company’s initial explanation. According to the allegedly deleted post, Arthur Grand maintains that it was actually “a new junior recruiter” that was responsible for the racist listing — not a former employee who used lingering permissions on his personal account to use the company’s official page.
If the screenshot’s authentic, it seems that in its rush to control the controversy, Arthur Grand couldn’t get its story straight.
Mysteriously, Vice notes, the company’s Twitter account has been disabled. Its Facebook page is now unavailable, too.
Sounds like things aren’t exactly going well over there.
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