I agree, but that would be a matter for the parents to sort out. Not a firing offense in my opinion unless he used company resources to post the pic or posted it to a company page.
I’m not sure if it’s a firing offense or not, but I wouldn’t dismiss the possibility without hearing more. It’s one thing to include an adult without someone’s permission. A comparable example would be to include a co-worker or perhaps a co-workers spouse visiting the offense on your Facebook page without their knowledge that a picture was taken. If someone found that out, that a co-worker had done that, you could be displeased if you’re not a close friend of that co-worker. It depends on the relationship between the two people perhaps. And it’s definitely something that a boss might have to say something to an employee about. But having so little regard for a co-worker AND the co-worker’s child by taking a close-up picture of a child without the parent’s permission and putting it on Facebook? It sounds like a potential firing offense to me. And the rest of the story confirms his conduct. He kept the picture up despite the comments of friends, when it was simply in his power to remove it, if he had no racist intent, as he claims. And as he is quoted here saying, he feels he is a victim also. But again, he could have just removed the photo once it got racist remarks. That shows, to me, that he got the remarks that he wanted from taking the photo in the first place. It’s very clear that he took the photo with the boy deliberately in the shot, and apparently then he put it on Facebook as his profile picture, no less, expecting to get such a reaction from his friends.
Well, the picture was taken at work. The child’s mother had him in the office. Why pick on a three year old child?