Suicide by Blogging?
 

Should blogging about your job, even if you do it anonymously, give cause for termination if your employer discovers the blog and doesn't like it?

Interesting article in today's KC Star's website:

http://www.kansascity.com/news/local/story/1245713.html

Girl named CJ wrote a blog about her experiences as a server in a fancy Plaza KC restaurant. The restaurant manager found out about the blog, and fired her over it. She never mentioned the restaurant until after they whacked her. The restaurant was the Capital Grille.

Is this a first amendment issue? Does an employee have a right to blog about his or her workplace on the internet especially if they never mention the name of the place, or their real name, or any of the other employees real names? Or does a person undertake that at their own risk, "Suicide by Blogging" as CJ called it?

Whaddya think?

I don't mind.

As long as it's painless...

No.

A) First amendment issues require a Government actor, private companies can fire you for speaking out against them without fear of Constitutional reprocussions (unless there's some kind of excessive entanglement between the gov't actor and the private entity, but I doubt the gov't is funding the Capital Grille).

B) There are often statutory provisions that will not allow this sort of firing, but they aren't even tenuously connected to the Constitution. So it's certainly not a 1st amendment issue but recourse is available in many of these instances under state law.

C) Missouri is an employment at will state, they can fire her for damn near any reason they want, including blogging negatively about them.

She's got nothing.

Moral to the story is......if you don't want people to find out about things, don't post shit up on the internet.

It also I guess depends what she was writing about and if she used an alias, how did the manager at Capital Grille find that it was her blog?

If you have to ask about doing a particular thing... it's likely best to avoid it. That's always a good rule of thumb, especially when you're talking about your job (whether you're a VP or a waitress) and making comments about your job or employer online.

Who knows... someone could have easily connected the dots on who the employer was and just look at the case last year with the Eagles' worker that was canned for comments he made on Facebook.

In regards to FB... I've read comments from several of my friends where they have made comments about their job (some during work hours) that weren't necessarily things an employer would want to read. I sent them notes saying "you might want to delete that"... some did.

You just never know... there's freedom of speech and then there's being smart with that freedom, especially in this job-starved economy.

I'd assume it's this...

http://frothygirlz.com/2009/04/21/in...ds-3/#more-798

Haha, or this..

http://frothygirlz.com/2009/04/28/in...s-4/#more-1007

Personally, Id try to avoid posting anything negative about your job or employer out on blogs/message boards/social networking sites.

I know a few who constantly bash their boss on Facebook. I try to tell them its a bad idea.....

That looks like the killer. What a dipshit!

I wouldn't post anything about my employer, good or bad, period. It's stupid.

Do waiters make that much to be considered rich to where she wouldn't feel the nudge of a 42 flat screen purchase? Am I in the wrong profession?

In Missouri you can fire anyone for any reason. Or no reason at all.

at the capitol grille? yes, they do make that much.

but that's what you get when the typical dinner tab for 2 people is well over $100.

I made $100 on Friday and Saturday nights bussing tables at the Majestic Steakhouse... so yeah, when each server is handing me $15-25 at the end if the night, I think it's safe to assume they made $200-250+. Not sure how that would average out during the week, but if you're willing to put in the hours I'm sure you could make close $50,000 a year.... and I'm sure most servers don't claim nearly as much as they make towards taxes.

OTOH, it's a lot of hours and you're working directly with the customer, so that sucks...