"I got fired from the new job today," a twentysomething man said over a cup of coffee. "But I deserved it. I did something incredibly stupid."
He told me the story of how he had gotten into an argument with a customer, then went to the back and started talking to a coworker. During the conversation, he used a racial epithet to describe the customer. The regional manager overheard, and that was that.
After he was fired, was his free speech rights violated? He had made a racist remark, in a context that would have created or contributed to a hostile work environment. It was an stupid thing to do, and he deserved to get fired for it.