Employee — a grown man for God’s sake — claims he was fired for being a brony

Readers: A brony is a male fan of the children’s television show My Little Pony.

(This is the part where you let everything that you’ve read thus far sink in, as you watch this clip, close your office door, and laugh hysterically. Go ahead. It’s ok).

According to Gawker, the brony posted to Reddit that his co-workers gave him a raft of crap for setting his office computer screensaver to Applejack, a My Little Pony character.

(Go ahead. Really, it’s ok to laugh).

After getting called into his boss’ office and told to change his screensaver because, you know, it’s creepy as all hell when a man in his 30s has a My Little Pony screensaver on his office computer, the former employee relented.

That is, until a few months later when, on Take Your Child to Work Day, the brony saw that the boss’s daughter was wearing a Rainbow Dash t-shirt, and commented to her that he likes the shirt. (Rainbow Dash is also a My Li— yeah, you get the idea).

Eventually, the brony claims he was was fired for being a brony, but not before calling HR to obtain some answers surrounding his termination.

Could you imagine being on the receiving end of that call? I bet there’s nothing in that PHR certification of yours to prepare you for that one, is there?

Anyway…

Legal “Brony discrimination” or unlawful sexual stereotyping?

There is a serious point to this post. 

*** searches desperately for serious point to an otherwise gratuitous post ***

As I’ve noted before, Title VII does make it unlawful to stereotype based on a person’s gender non-conforming behavior. So, taking the brony’s version of the facts as true, would he have been fired if he were a woman? I’d like to think yes and, therefore, what happened here was perfectly legal. Because, damn, what grown person — male or female — would think it professional to have a My Little Pony screensaver at work.

But, then again, what do I know? I have an Allen Iverson fathead in my office and heard about this brony story listening to Howard Stern on the ride back from speaking at an HR conference yesterday. So that, plus this blog, makes me a bit of an enigma and probably the wrong person to ask.

What do you think? Did the brony’s former employer break the law? Or was the employer justified in firing the brony? Let me know in the comments below.