Fired For Blogging

I keep encountering references lately to bloggers being fired for blogging. First to come to my attention was dooce, fired in 2002. Then I heard of a few others. Still in the news, I think, is a guy at Microsoft who got the axe over posting a photo of a loading dock. Some of these folks are proud of what they did and some of them have offered to take it all back and have been repulsed by the companies that fired them. There’s been some talk of suing, but such suits have not yet occurred, I don’t think.

I do have one friend who "troubled the system" at work with her blogging and they troubled her back, but she hasn’t been fired. She has been cautioned enough not to write any more in her blog whatsoever, though, at least not so far, and that troubles me. Still, we all know how little trouble it is to make a new blog and call it "Dixie Crabgrass" by Skinny Elbert.

I’m no expert in the matter and am merely a little interested. I don’t blog at work, so what do I care? Nonetheless, it’s struck me that there are some of you that I know who should give it some consideration unless you’re wishing that you could get fired. If you Google the phrase fired for blogging there are many useful info sites cited about the topic.

One you might want to glance at is this simple one, Blogger Help : How Not to Get Fired Because of Your Blog.

Much of the advice seems just dull common sense to me, but since so much of it has been avoided by bloggers I know, I have to conclude that, like teenage drivers and drinkers, my blogger friends think they’re “bulletproof” and that surely no one in the modern world is that big a stuffed shirt. I don’t know why they think that, though; I certainly meet about the same percentage of AIC (Assholes In Charge) as I ever did—no one’s changed!

But I am always finding at least some bloggers to be a little careless. Even those who use pseudonyms and try to avoid revealing where they live sometimes spill the beans to a friend of a friend and suddenly everyone you know Knows. Your coworkers know. Your bosses know. If the greatest harm that comes to you is that you have to give up your blog or start a new one and keep it bowdlerized, that’ll be better than being fired, I guess. But whose fault will all that be—the big cruel world’s or your own for being so naïve?

Oh, by the way—I like to think I’m a liberal and still a bit of a libertine, but I’d probably consider firing you if you were working for me and blogging on my time. So why shouldn’t that cutthroat AIC you work for want to dump you for it? He never even liked you like I do! Well, maybe, but like me he might fire you anyway, his heart filled with chagrin.

---

Addendum: Bizgirl Hangs Herself With Her Own Rope

Some months ago I was reading Bizgirl for a short while, but couldn't decide why she kept provoking her employer even after they hinted repeatedly that she was screwing up about her blog. I finally got to where she seemed so weird about it (as reported by herself in "quoted" conversations with her bosses that I concluded I didn't know if she was having Them on or having me on. In short, she seemed very nice, but I eventually no longer gave a fuck if she lost her job or not, especially since it all began to seem like fiction. Maybe I'm too old and don't know what's cool any more. That's probably it. Anyway, you can read about it in some of her own words at the link above to her "You're fired" scenario.

---