This Cook Can't be a Bus Driver Either

This happened a while ago, but it’s been in the news as of late, so here ya go!

http://www.11alive.com/news/article/322761/40/Bus-driver-fired-over-Facebook-posting-files-lawsuit

Johnny Cook, a bus driver in Haralson County, Georgia, was fired in May over a Facebook post he made. After hearing one of his middle school students complaining about being hungry he respectfully questioned the student about why this was the case. The student told Cook that he was denied lunch earlier that day because he could not pay the forty cents it takes to pay for a free/reduced lunch at his school.  With a heavy heart, Johnny Cook used Facebook as an outlet, saying that “As a taxpayer [he] would much rather feed a child than throw it away. [He] would rather feed a child than give food stamps to a crack head” and that the next time the cafeteria can’t feed a child for forty cents they could call him for the money. The next day he was called into his employer’s office and given a choice: repent and revoke his previous statement or be terminated. Cook refused to apologize and lost his job. The story is back in the news again after the American Civil Liberties Union agreed to take his case just a few days ago.

I can see this from both directions. Most people are going to back Johnny one hundred percent. After all, the first amendment to the constitution gives Americans the right to free speech. He was simply sticking up for a hungry middle schooler. In today’s world, forty cents is hardly anything. What can you buy with forty cents? An egg, a party hat, a piece of bubble gum. Heck, you can’t even buy a postage stamp with that. If you think about the amount of responsibility bus drivers have carry on a daily basis, and then the amount they’re paid, it just doesn’t add up. I earn between seven and ten dollars an hour on nights that I babysit, even after the kids have gone to bed and I’m sitting on the couch watching television. My responsibilities consist of making sure that they eat at least two bites of green beans and put on pull-ups before their heads hit pillows. I don’t take them farther than the backyard, and I’m still probably making more money than most bus drivers in the same time period. I’m not saying that more money would make it okay for any bus driver to blurt their opinion all over the internet, but I think it’s part of the problem.

Though forty cents started all this, the hungry child and mean cafeteria ladies are not the center of this argument. Johnny is. With that first amendment freedom that we all have comes responsibility. I talked to one of my teachers about this; she told me that teachers are required to sign some sort of waiver about what they are and aren’t allowed to post on social media. Even if Cook didn’t sign a waiver, there is a standard that he didn’t uphold with that Facebook status, and the state has a right to be angry. He clearly did not choose the right outlet for all those opinions.

Does Cook still have a right to a job, or was his post a little too much? We will soon find out.

“This is what the world has come to.”