It’s-a Blog!
October 7th, 2007 by The Grey GhostI caught this story courtesy of Penny Arcade… Again comes the ever-pesky controversy of people being fired for what they post on their personal websites. My own philosophy has pretty much remained this: If someone in the company you work for finds your site by chance and then reports you, I think that’s fair. It’s no different than if your trash-talking were spread via word-of-mouth and it got back to the people whom it affected. What I don’t like is when companies make it someone’s job to go out and dig up dirt on its employees. That is something that I find intrusive and counter-productive toward company morale.
I’ve had experience with this a couple times myself in my LiveJournal. When I worked for Spencer’s a few years ago, they used some things I said online as part of their excuse to fire me. Then, shortly after I started up with my current company, I would write about how happy I was…only for my then-manager to find it and scold me for it later. What bothered me in those cases is not so much that they found what I’d written, but that they actively sought it out. Luckily, I’m in a position now where that person is no longer my boss, and my current superiors don’t care as much.
One thing I do agree with in terms of “safe blogging” is keeping anonymity. I rarely use my own name or the names of my friends online. And I certainly would never use the names of anyone that I worked with. Not so much for if they were to find what I’d written, but to protect them from readers-turned-vigilantes that would take what I’d written as fuel to act toward them, thus making it their business. If you can refrain from writing something specific like, “Simon Trent down in accounting thinks he can boss us around just because he makes $1.05 more an hour than most of us.” you risk not only that guy being offended by your post, but also violating any company non-disclosure agreement. Instead, simply put it as, “That guy in accounting is a dick. And I think he’s gay.” Then I see no real harm to be done. As long as you don’t make it easy to connect your site to yourself, then the person you’re bitching about could easily be anyone. This includes the fatal mistake of posting a photo of yourself on the site, which the woman in the above story carelessly made.
Running a risk myself here, there’s an example I have relative to another aspect of this controversy. There’s a girl that works in my company that has a MySpace page. I’ve seen it myself and through it, she portrays herself in a light that I feel that most employers would find unfavorable as someone who not only works within, but also represents their company. All the same, I acknowledge that it’s really none of my business. However, what I do find dangerous for her is that she logs into her MySpace account while on company time. That’s a whole different violation, right there. I think you should write whatever you want, but do it on your own personal time, not on the company’s dime. Not only that, but a sure-fire way to get your website found is to write in it while at work!
Back to the case of the Nintendo woman, I didn’t read too much from what’s actually in her blog, so I can’t really say that I think she got what she deserved. If she was giving out internal information from the company, then that’s a violation of the company’s privacy, and thus she should most certainly be fired. If she was just discussing her relationships with her fellow co-workers, then I would have brought her into the office and warned that she better secure her blog before it creates a problem that affects productivity among the staff. And I may then still agree with her being fired, depending on just how much drama she may have already stirred up. But if she was only writing out her feelings and opinions about the gaming industry and her work environment, then I’d say that termination was way too harsh.
I’m always going to support the freedom of expression, but we have to understand that while we have that constitutional right, we’re not immune to the consequences of the things we say and do. And as I’ve expressed in a rant of mine, the door swings both ways.
