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I'm confused why the Fired by an Intoxicated Boss question was closed. The close reason says:

"Questions seeking advice on company-specific regulations, agreements, or policies should be directed to your manager or HR department. Questions that address only a specific company or position are of limited use to future visitors. Questions seeking legal advice should be directed to legal professionals. For more information, click here.

However, I'm confused how this connects with the question, as it seems to me that it's more of a social situation than anything else?

Especially if we follow the link in the close reason I don't think this is the intended usage for this close reason.


The question was reopened on Jan 23.

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  • 1
    The intoxication only matters if upper management decides the action was wrong and intoxication was a factor in the mistake. The only way to find that out is to take it to them.
    – keshlam
    Jan 22, 2017 at 5:14
  • 2
    @keshlam That is one possible answer to this question. Other possible answers might be "don't say anything", or many others. It's a highly usual situation where someone doesn't know what to do – closing it with this close reason makes no sense. Jan 23, 2017 at 4:08
  • 1
    Disagree that it is "highly usual", but neither of us has statistical evidence.
    – keshlam
    Jan 23, 2017 at 4:13
  • 9
    @keshlam So getting fired by a drunk boss because you're eating too much KFC is business as usual...? Jan 23, 2017 at 4:20
  • 2
    No, that specific combination is so rare that it's not a good Stack Exchange question, and it's the wrong question because most of it is irrelevant, and what isn't irrelevant ("fired, perhaps unfairly") is a duplicate. Stack Exchange isn't a discussion site, it's a crowdsourced FAQ site. Questions which won't yield useful new answers get closed. This strikes me as a good example of that. Of course others may or may not agree, and the community can vote to reopen just as they voted to close
    – keshlam
    Jan 23, 2017 at 5:23
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    @keshlam "this specific combination is too rare" is a different reason than the given closure reason. I understand the purpose of the SE sites, but "too localized" isn't a very good closure reason IMHO, and something that seems almost arbitrary applied (many, many questions on workplace are pretty specific). Jan 23, 2017 at 5:46
  • 1
    The close-vote system has a small number of fairly broad categories, plus one write-your-own-reason choice. There is a certain amount of "that's close enough to my reason" granularity. It also tends to bias folks toward agreeing with the reasons already given. Al Yes, this could be improved, though you would probably have to take that request to the site-wide meta. However, the fact that I feel one reason is strongest does not mean I disagree with the other reason given; it just means that even if we reversed that it wouldn't help; the question would still have been closed, I think.
    – keshlam
    Jan 23, 2017 at 12:51
  • And in fact the official close reason is correct, and the reason selected is the one we use in these cases. Appeal process is company-specific, take it to management/hr; if you think you have a legal case (which is probably not an option here) you need expert advice. If we had closed this as duplicate, the one it duplicated would most likely have been closed for this reason, though I haven't checked. Several justify able close reasons, and I don't yet see a way to edit it which fixes them.
    – keshlam
    Jan 23, 2017 at 13:03
  • 1
    I don't think that the core of the question is about what policy to follow, but about how to deal with a difficult social situation. @keshlam Jan 23, 2017 at 13:07
  • Social situations are out of scope except as they specifically apply to the workplace, so that would hit another close reason. If the question was how to manage an irrational/drunken manager it might be in scope but I think it'll be duplicate again.
    – keshlam
    Jan 23, 2017 at 13:13
  • @keshlam ...? Half the questions are about that? Jan 23, 2017 at 13:15
  • OK, I may be missing something! Which specific question do you think merits reopening/reasoning?
    – keshlam
    Jan 23, 2017 at 13:17
  • 20
    Voting to reopen. Bizarre actions of managers are not uncommon, so IMO this is relevant to the workplace. Jan 23, 2017 at 14:20
  • 7
    @Keshlam - This question is not what is going to happen, it is how should the op handle the situation. That is on topic, constructive, and something we can answer. Jan 23, 2017 at 15:57
  • Usually the way to handle bizzare management practices is either to work around them (not an option here), quit (not an option here), appeal past them to upper management or HR, or try for legal redress (generally not a good option if you want to retain that job). Which I believe have all been previously discussed.
    – keshlam
    Jan 23, 2017 at 23:20

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