My brother recently quit his job in order to take a trip to Spain, that he’s been planning for a long time. Good on him.
Back in 2006, he got me a job. I was fired in June 2007.
Why was I fired? Because of this blog! You see, in June 2007, there was a work-related disaster that killed 11 people - while I was on shift. Like most employees, this made an impact on me, so naturally I blogged about it. My mistake was mentioning the company I worked for.
The day after publishing the post, I was pulled aside by management and asked to delete it. I complied immediately, and thought that would be the end of the matter. I was wrong.
The day after, at the start of my shift, I was pulled aside again. This time, I was asked to hand in my security pass. I was told that a decision had not yet been made on my continued employment, but that they would call me later. This was a transparent lie, but I didn’t call them on it. I also didn’t feel the need to tell them about the other pass I had that they didn’t know about. (I arranged to have this returned at a later date.)
All in all, it was a rather shabby affair.
Fortunately I was able to find employment shortly afterwards at another company, where I remain today. They shall remain nameless.
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August 25, 2008 at 1:24 pm
andy
Ack.. That sucks really bad. I am sure you have a lawsuit of somesort. They cant fire you for what you do on your owntime.
August 28, 2008 at 9:47 am
Patrick
Wow, what a bummer, whatever happened to free speech? That really is not fair!
January 9, 2009 at 11:19 am
themolk
Markk, I feel your pain…
While I didn’t lose my job over my blog, I heard after I left a company that my blogs about the exploits of my co-workers at that time while at work “had been discovered” and as a pre-emptive strike I removed all reference to the company in case they wanted to “speak with me”.
There are some nasty lines blurring in all of this: non-disclosure and confidentiality agreements vs what I do and say in my personal time and how much the company “owns” me.
To be fair, you’re better off being away from the place and also blogging about work while retaining their anonimity, should you choose to. You (and I!) don’t want to be the poster boy for the first ever case of unfair dismissal over blogging in Australia… I don’t think so anyway…
…besides, we’ve got a submarine to fund…