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I don't really care much about their apology because it doesn't affect anyone other than themselves, but glad that the pressure managed to get the ad down. We won that battle and that's all that matters.
No! It's not all that matters! What matters is having a huge internet pile-on of self-righteous indignation that anyone could have done something ill-judged. What matters is that no apology is ever sufficient even if it uses the words "we fucked up". What matters is communicating how you always knew they were a wrong-un from some interaction you had a while ago or from some old instagram post!
(totally agree with @lynx though, if you can't pay a living wage, then your business model has no place in the modern world)
ffm-
Look, all I'm saying is that yeah it's cool they apologised and all but I guess they've got a bit more to do before they win back people's trust. Think that's not totally unfair given the fact that the apology still tried to rationalise what they were doing, and given that a day beforehand they were deleting comments on the original post pretty much making the same complaint as us in the hope that nobody would kick off about it. Am I saying that they are therefore unforgivable or fundamentally bad? No, of course not, give them the chance to make it up. But also saying 'we fucked up' is kinda the bare minimum. Like reputation is more of a track record thing than it is admitting what you did was bad when enough people call it out. Other people seem to have good examples on this thread suggesting that it's part of a pattern rather than an isolated mistake. That information seems relevant. I genuinely do hope that they turn it around and make the effort to be a good business/employer and not just do the bare minimum they can get away with. But then again that's their business and not mine...
Enda
Yeah saw the comments on there, unsurprisingly the gammon army comes out in full force whenever something like this happens. Was tempted to wade in myself but really don't feel like I've got the time or energy to go up against professional landlords with nothing better to do than skull cans of Lo-carb Monster Energy and spend the day on social media larping as anointed guardians of societal morality. Like I guess they do it as some kind of weird bargaining ritual with their subconscious telling them that the world is changing but whatever. The people who did comment seemed to have a pretty good handle on it and I think just liking those responses does enough to send the message whilst depriving people who think 'not paying people for work is good actually' of the oxygen.
Also agree that the apology from HP was quite mealy mouthed. I guess they'd already undermined the notion that they really wanted to learn anything by deleting all the critical comments until it became too big for them to continue doing that. At the end of the day all of these statements are just canned woke corporatism (literally every single one of them is horny for their 'community', even companies like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon talk about 'community' these days!). Talk is cheap so I don't put much store by them in any case. At the end of the day though I don't really care much about their apology because it doesn't affect anyone other than themselves, but glad that the pressure managed to get the ad down. We won that battle and that's all that matters.