On a personal note, I understand his frustration. In our family, we experience this on daily basis with our teenage son. The main trait here is lack of respect for the needs of the other members of the family. The thing is: you cannot fire your own family… or can you?
It’s still a matter of debate whether a company president should be sending an email that threatens employees over an empty milk carton in the office fridge, but if this is a repeated offense, it’s somehow understandable.
Lack of mutual respect is a serious offense in a company, and as little as the milk issue may seem to some, Keith Zakheim is right. His email may be a bit rough, but if you read between the lines, you’ll find that leaving three drops of milk in a carton in the fridge is indicative of other traits:
The person that did this is either incredibly lazy, obnoxiously selfish or woefully devoid of intelligence – 3 traits that are consistent with the profile of FORMER Beckerman employees.
What Keith Zakheim should consider is finding out who sent the internal memo to Gawker, and fire them. It’s probably the same person who forgets to replace the milk.