Thank God I quit using their products decades ago.
They aren’t just wearing the uniforms, they are literally IDF.
Here’s the thing… a tiny bit of devil’s advocate here just to make sure we’re maintaining a bit of objectivity and not rushing to demonize, even though it’s Intuit and everything they do is fucking atrocious anyway. At least let’s make sure we are criticizing them for legitimate reasons.
IF we ignore the fact it’s the genocidal IDF we’re talking about here specifically… what would this situation look like if it were say the US Army Reserve instead?
Reservists having orders and needing time off from their day jobs isn’t exactly uncommon. Granted, the time frames here are probably longer than most of those instances. This isn’t something outrageous or particularly unexpected for military reserve employees.
I don’t know specific laws, but I’m willing to bet there are some about employers being required to approve requests related to military service. Whether those laws are specific enough to only refer to US armed forces is potentially questionable. As we’ve seen recently, apparently there are a shocking number of laws that are vague and lack specificity but just haven’t made their way through the courts for that before. It wouldn’t be surprising if simply applying that towards all military reserve versus just US could have a legal justification to prevent lawsuits against the company.
However, I can’t remember ever hearing about a company freely letting employees wear their US Army uniforms to everyday work. Especially a desk job. That’s batshit crazy. Openly allowing it is even crazier.
The article’s focus on the time off affecting workflows and that sort of thing are par for the course anytime someone takes time off at most companies. Because no one actually hires enough staff to start with, and especially not enough to properly cover for time off requests. It sucks for them obviously, but that is in no way specific to Intuit, that’s entirely on the lack of worker protections, either via law or through collective bargaining/Unionization.
worth knowing: the us tax code is as complicated as it is to keep these people in business. any attempt to simplify it enough for people to do their own taxes is met by pushback from lobbyists representing turbotax, h&r block, and whoever. if you’ve ever done your own taxes without one of the e-filers, you’ve probably had the experience of getting a letter from the irs saying you did it wrong, that they fixed it for you, and that if you want to contest their changes you can.
and the fucked up part is in the “libertarian” world and the tech world, they are treated as brilliant innovators. turbotax is cited as an example of brilliant innovation in The LEAN Startup (alongside Henry Ford). these are people whose only means of income only exists because the government protects them telling you they’ll protect you from the big scary government.
always remember kids. america is 13 scams stacked on top of each other and inside of each other. everything is a scam but they all also operate as a shell game. it’s never obvious how you’re getting scammed until you’ve already lost the money. most of us got swindled the day we were born here, but a lot of people end up believing the messaging of our sitcoms and reality shows that we live easy comfortable lives and that if they come here they’ll experience that.
