The Chris Hogan Controversy
How much say should your employer have over your lifestyle choices?
A post came across my Facebook feed last week that Chris Hogan was no longer with Ramsey Solutions. I was surprised since Hogan was a “Ramsey personality” and, to all appearances, had been groomed to be the heir apparent to Dave Ramsey.
What happened?
A former Ramsey Solutions employee, Caitlin O’Connor, had filed a lawsuit against the company in 2020 after being fired for having a child out of wedlock and violating the company’s Christian principles. (Of course it is debatable how Christian it is to fire a pregnant employee, especially since O’Connor also lost her health insurance and access to prenatal care.)
Chris Hogan, who by his own admission had several affairs during his marriage to now ex-wife Melissa, was not fired then even though the company knew about Hogan’s behavior. It is quite obvious why. In 2018, Ramsey’s company was in the middle of a major book launch, Hogan’s Everyday Millionaires. Firing Hogan would have been bad for the company’s image and, most of all, to its bottom line.
Of course, such hypocrisy is not good for the company’s image either, especially since Dave Ramsey often mentions that his company is one of the best places to work. Now the double-standard was exposed, and Hogan had to go.
Dave Ramsey has been absent from the show since then, perhaps to confer with his legal team on how to address this federal discrimination lawsuit, which has also requested a copy of Chris Hogan’s personnel file.
It is very likely that a court may decide that Ramsey crossed the line, and Ramsey’s policies and employee expectations are certainly extreme, but it is no secret that employers can require employees to follow all kinds of rules.
Female teachers do not have to wear skirts as some of my retired colleagues had to do. But anything that is not federally protected is still fair game. Teachers that violate a fairly strict moral code can be dismissed.
Most workplaces have strict rules. A friend’s husband worked for an electric company. Between job assignments, employees there were not even allowed to read. They just had to sit there. He could not wait to retire.
It seems many employees are complaining about workplace conditions. First-year analysts at Goldman Sachs complain about working long hours and on average, sleeping just five hours a night and enduring workplace abuse. (At least the CEO of Goldman Sachs promised today to make sure these analysts have Saturdays off.)
The pandemic has highlighted how stressful and poorly paid many care jobs really are. People working in nursing homes work hard and make very little. Health care workers feel overworked, and nurses are so traumatized they quit to escape working conditions that were challenging even before Covid.
Now we have a host of new companies who promise to monitor employees working from home, which may employees may find intrusive.
There are many more examples of stressful jobs full of intrusive rules. Of course, we could just avoid jobs like that, but can we really? Some people are entrepreneurial and can be their own boss. That path is not exactly stress free either. One of my friends started selling records and has two stores now, but she and her husband are working very long hours.
Ultimately, the only way to make sure that we can walk away when our employer turns into “big brother” is to be financially independent. If we are, we can decide our own fate and live our lives according to our own rules.
