File this one under, “Why wasn’t he doing the job for which he was being paid?”
John Quinn, a freelance photographer covering an Obama town hall meeting at Baldwin-Wallace college in Berea, Ohio started yelling at Obama toward the beginning of the meeting for not starting off with the pledge. He then started to recite it himself.
Obama, keeping his cool, questioned if Quinn was a member of the press, and then led the audience in the pledge. Then…well, then life went on.
Now, I’m all for free speech, and I like reciting the pledge. Yet, from everything I’m reading, this guy was supposedly on a job. I find it highly unprofessional to do something like this. You’re only making your client look bad by doing something that’s not in your job description to do. You want to call out someone for not saying the pledge? Do it on your own time. That’s the real world. When you’re doing a job, you do it with professionalism, not disrespect. Unprofessional behavior makes you and your employer look bad. Everybody knows that; it’s the first lesson in Working World 101
On a side note, never having been to a town hall meeting, I don’t know the proper protocols. Is saying the pledge a customary thing to do?
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