Peg in the Machine

There are numerous accounts of people saying they were fired for blogging, or more accurately being fired for “inappropriate” content on the blog. Of course about as many workplaces (if not all) say that they didn’t fire people because of the blog but for another reason. From my own experience I’ve seen a woman fired for having the nerve to get pregnant, but then after she was gone the manager forged documents saying that she quit since he knew she’d be filing a lawsuit — then it’d be her words against “her” words that he said she did.

Do a simple search for “fired for blogging” or any variants of it and you’ll come up with a number of stories about it. Some sites will give you tips such as:

• Never talk about co workers, clients, customers, products, or anything slightly related to the company — even if details and names are changed
• Never disclose confidential information about the company (while revealing trade secrets would make sense… makes a person wonder about revealing illegal activities)
• Never post any pictures of yourself or anyone else doing anything good, bad, or illegal
• Never post any links to anything that might be considered “bad taste” (so even those links your boss forwarded to you shouldn’t be put up)
• Never let your workplace find out you have a blog
• Never lie to your workplace that you have a blog (so tell them)

And yes, those last two do contradict.

But when did the law start to support an employer for firing people for doing things on their own time that don’t violate any laws or policies — and that all but a handful of people don’t find tasteless? There’s even a story online about a man fired for blogging about his newborn child (http://drewciferstonezone.blogspot.com/2007/03/i-have-never-been-fired-from-anything.html, or just do a search for “Mercenary Audio Story: Drew Townson”). Now it’s true that most states have an “at will” employment policy, but it seems these days it seems as if people are fired for stupid reasons more than anything (thanks, in part, to the internet where the media can’t control what’s news).

Let’s have a list of real-world things that don’t result in people being fired:

• Sexually abusing another employee
• Beating up another employee
• Locking an employee in the basement (when they’re afraid of closed spaces)
• Stealing from the company
• Not doing their work, or taking an entire shift to put away a single pallet of goods (when other employees can put away a semi loaded down in pallets in a shift)
• Ignoring customers
• Selling trade secrets
• Showing up drunk/high
• Getting drunk/high at work
• Having sex on someone else’s desk
• Working for a competitor at the same time

And here’s a small list for what can get you fired (and yes, sometimes the above gets you fired too — but based on experiences, it takes a lot longer):

• Blogging about your newborn child
• Blogging about your life outside of work, with no mention of where you work
• Being caught having an affair (outside of work, with someone not related to the company)
• Doing something that many humans do
• Getting a virus on your computer that might download other things (even if the virus came from doing company-based work)
• Posting a cartoon at work (while it could be seen as “bad taste” — it makes one wonder if there isn’t more truth behind it)
• Having a child with cancer that you have to take for treatment that causes you to have to take off work

What’s sad is every one of those examples can be found online (even though some are from personal knowledge). And I’m sure there’s many more real reasons people have been fired that are covered up by the company.

But why is it even allowed to happen? Why haven’t politicians gotten involved to make it so any reason a person gets let go has to be documented with actual proof — and not be based on what a person does outside work (of course, if you’re running a daycare and an employee is arrested for child molestation and is convicted that’d be different [and tricky if not convicted]). And better yet — why are people putting up with it? Of course the latter makes all the sense in the world — people need their jobs, if they support the person they know they’re the next ones out the door.

Thanks to the principal of things that makes stuff stick out, why is it so hard to fire employees not doing their job, not treating people with respect, and not following company policy — yet employees can be fired within hours if they do something that isn’t against company policy and not even during work hours? I bet that at this very moment everyone reading this can think of at least one person at most of their workplaces that didn’t do their work and should’ve been fired. Chances are many of you know of at least one person who was fired for a reason that didn’t make sense or you knew the reason was wrong.

Politicians need to get involved and prevent these incidents from happening. Laws need to be rewritten to protect the people, not the companies that give money to the re-elections.