This would be easy to hear about initially and start griping about how wrong it is, but in the end it’s just a case of properly being punished for being stupid. A young lady from Nintendo posted to her blog things about work. She criticized cow-orkers, perhaps thinking that because she didn’t name them specifically she wouldn’t get in trouble. Someone at Nintendo found out about her blogging and she was fired.
On August 31, Jessica Zenner was driving her 3-year-old son to day care when her BlackBerry rang. It was the human resources director at Zenner’s work calling to tell her she was fired. The cause, Zenner says, was because her bosses at Nintendo discovered her personal blog, Inexcusable Behavior.
. . .
One post on Zenner’s blogâ€â€titled “The Daily Weed”â€â€begins with her disputing her friends’ perception that she is a pothead. She digresses into a wry tirade against one of her bosses: “One plus about working with [a] hormonal, facial-hair-growing, frumpy [woman] is that I have found a new excuse to drink heavily,” Zenner writes. “My gut tells me that this woman hasn’t been fucked in years.”
Now really, I totally get griping about cow-orkers. I tell others allllll the time about the stupidity I see and suffer through at work. But I’ve been careful to not gripe too specifically on the Blahg about work, and decided to remove the one really bad post I made after I put it up last year. Blogging and anything about one’s job just don’t go together for non-work blogs. It’s not wise, and anyone who thinks about it can see why companies are not keen on having their employees blog about work – even anonymously (although claiming the post anonymously and posting a picture of yourself on your blog aren’t really compatible thoughts).
I feel for her, because she’s young and made a mistake that an older worker probably would have realized could be trouble. But I’ve seen others call out first amendment protections or claim that since she wasn’t blogging AT work, she can’t be fired for it. I don’t think those are applicable here since she’s not at all anonymous nor can one freely criticize others and not face consequences just because one doesn’t use specific names. If it’s easy to figure out who she’s talking about, she’s going to cause trouble for her employee.
On the plus side, she has since found a new job, and I’m pretty sure her new employer knows about this and has most likely already specifically condoned further personal blogs (although I bet they have advised her on things not to blog so she doesn’t get into this kind of trouble again). (via Joystiq)
[tags]Stupid, Blogger fired for personal blog, Protected speech[/tags]