Wrongly Fired or Just Desserts?
April 27, 2009 by Phil Gerbyshak
Filed under Business
I recently wrote an article called Fired for Facebook and Twitter, where I shared stories of folks who posted less than flattering notes about their place of employment…and were then terminated from their positions.
One comment I got merits some far deeper conversation. Emilie offered this very difficult question I’ve been thinking about for a few days:
I had been a manager at a local company and had been with them for 3 and a half years. During this timeframe I was promoted 3 times, never received any disciplinary action, and consistently had strong performance reviews. Yesterday I was fired for complaining about my job on my Facebook status. NOW, however I am very aware that perhaps this may be wrong or not the smartest… I also have my profile privacy blocked so that you would have to be my friend to see it. With that in mind, it was not as if I was providing this “Complaint” to the entire world wide web, and in fact, there would have been very very few people that worked for this company that would have seen this. I also never named the company, any other employee names, etc…
How am I still in the wrong and losing my job over this? Don’t I have some sort of protection that at least requires them to not only warn me that they think this is an issue, but provide me with some sort of documentation on how I violated a policy??
Though I don’t know what if there’s an employment contract or any other information other than what was shared above, I don’t think Emilie has much of a leg to stand on. Most employees have at will employment, which means either party can break the relationship for any reason except for discrimination.
As someone who writes a lot of articles online, who has a presence on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and more, I’d encourage you to keep your dirty laundry to yourself and not put them anywhere anyone could read them. You wouldn’t make photocopies of a note disparaging your employer, you wouldn’t say it to a report for the Wall Street Journal, so don’t say them anywhere online where anyone could see them. It doesn’t matter if you don’t think anyone can read it, someone who shouldn’t can and will see it, and then they will make the decision whether it is relevant or not.
As a friend, I’d encourage you to think of this like you think of unflattering pictures of yourself: Keep them to yourself and your spouse, and maybe a few close friends and nobody else. Keep them off the internet, out of e-mail, and don’t put them anywhere they could fall into the wrong hands.
Lastly, as a manager, I’d say there may be more at play here than what Julie is saying. Her manager may have an ax to grind and was just looking for a reason to fire her. Or maybe she’s shown other bad judgment and though nobody has ever said anything before, this was the opening they were looking for to term. Or any number of other reasons.
What’s your advice for Emilie?
Disclaimer: I am not an HR lawyer, nor do I work in HR, so my commentary is my own, and it is not meant to give any legal advice. If you or anyone you know needs official HR advice, consult your company’s HR department and/or an employment attorney.
IMG_0092 photo credit to aymlis
To a significant degree, one of the task learnings for new managers is how to protect the company, support its values, and guide subordinates in their understanding of the firm’s strategies. And if a new manager bad-mouths the firm over anything, he/she will hear quickly. And if a new manager doesn’t coach subordinates from the perspective of the company, that too will create tension
So if you’re an employee or manager with frustrations about your firm, you never want to go public about those frustrations. Instead, take your frustration and proposed recommendation to your boss, and keep it there. These are cultural rules that not everyone understands clearly, but they exist in every firm.
With these cultural understandings, it’s not a suprise to me that a firm got punitive about airing dirty laundry in public. That’s also why whistle-blowing is so unusual in American firms and needs to be considered very carefully before moving in that direction.
I have several issues with this. First, as a boss I fully expect that my employees bitch about me to family and friends and among themselves sometimes — and complain about their jobs. I’m a great person and friendly with all of them, but employees bitch about their bosses and their jobs. I do, you do, we all do.
As a Managing Director of a community theatre with close to 1,000 volunteers every year, many who are enthusiastic about talking about the organization on-line, I often see things that sting. For the most part these people promote the theatre, but sometimes they complain. Once I reacted on-line, and it just made everything worse because it kept the comments alive. I’ll never do that again. As a manager I try to remember – although they are posted publically, these are not things I’m really meant to hear.
Most of us say things on-line and in e-mail that we wouldn’t say in person. It’s a seductive and dangerous mode of communication, and my advice is to just let things go. So “God, my job is frustrating,” or “If only the boss knew what she was doing” or “I was furious at my boss at work today,” – while it can sting, I don’t think it should cause termination – especially if it didn’t complain about the company itself, just specific situations that effected that person. I do think a reprimand of a generally good employee is a more appropriate reaction than firing them.
However, it’s just a bad idea to say things in cyber-space you wouldn’t say in person. No matter what you mean, it can be misinterpreted and you are not there to read the person’s reactions. You may think you’re the clearest writer in the world, but I guarantee what you meant to say won’t come through to a substantial number of people reading your post or email. (Believe me, I know!) I now keep public internet pages for very surface things – I don’t want my board or employees to know if I’m depressed, for instance, or confused, or even what my religion is. Why give them that information? Why expose my moments of immaturity or angst to everyone I know? And now for me emails are for imparting information only. If I have something to discuss, I pick up the phone.
If I need to express myself in unconventional or emotionally raw ways, I hide my identity. Do you really want your children, grandparents, co-workers or bosses to know you’re Madame Zoey, Goddess of Love and fantasize about being a dominatrix and tying your boss to his office chair with leather straps? Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Do you really want your cousins and people you went to college with to know your wife is mad at you? We have all gotten a little crazy with how open we are on-line, I think. It’s bitten me in the butt – I’ll bet it will bite all of use in one way or the other, sooner rather than later.
Criticizing your employer online is a lot like having sex with a hooker — it may feel good at the time, but you clearly do so at your own risk.
Sure, you never expect that you’ll catch something or get cornered by the local news crew coming out of the hotel room but you never know….
I tend to agree with the comments above – If you won’t say it directly to your boss then you shouldn’t say it in public, and anything done on-line is public no matter what settings you use.
Since we don’t know what was said or any other mitigating circumstances, it’s hard to judge if the employer was being rational or not. In today’s world dealing with very public conversations about the company is a fact of life. Dealing with employees who have become used to this public discourse will also become more common.
Managers are held to a higher standard than others in a company. They are expected to ‘vent up’ and provide solutions rather than just sharing complaints. Is it fair? Maybe not, but there are advantages to being in a leadership position that should balance out the higher expectations and/or limitations.