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Scared me this morning

Ninjas make great pets

09:19 / 12.01.05

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,1388290,00.html

is this old news? apologies.

just gave me quite a fright! do we really live in a world where you can do NOthing thats not policy???

lonely as a cloud...

09:24 / 12.01.05

Caught that on The Register this morning. Frankly, he shouldn't have mentioned the name of his place of work, although sacking him was a little severe.

Ninjas make great pets

09:29 / 12.01.05

fair nuff Cloud.. point.

I still believe anyone should be able to voice their opinions. They could have asked him to remove the name from the blog easily enough before being so drastic..

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

10:03 / 12.01.05

Yeah, I think it's bang out of order- but he should have guessed they'd be bastards about it and maybe been a bit more careful.

Course, now it's in the papers, everyone knows which branch he works at and that the boss is a dickwad.

In fact, if any 'lithers frequent that particular branch, they could always go in, ask for the manager, and tell him.

From the excerpts in the Guardian, I don't really think he said anything particularly out of order anyway.

10:07 / 12.01.05

I like Neil Gaiman's comments about it.

10:27 / 12.01.05

It's a drastic action, yes, and it shows that many companies have yet to grasp the fact the the internet has brought every individual soap-box within reach of millions of listeners. But having given it some thought, the blame for these firings cannot be placed solely on the company.

To take the soap-box metaphor: If I had, in the 80's, gone and stood on one outside my place of employment and shouted about how my boss was a dick, I'd have had a very short career too. The internet, and especially blogging, does not anonymise everything that's posted on it. Yet some people seem to believe that they can get away with things like this, exactly because "it's the internet!". Don't get me wrong, I'm an advocate for free speech, but with free speech comes the responsibility of using it in a mature manner and using your common sense.

And yes, I realise that common sense is a loaded term about which we could debate until the cows come home. But for the sake of the argument can we please assume that the rule of thumb of not being totally obvious about your private life in a medium peopled by quite a few nutcases, whackos and corporate lawyers should be one that everyone can grasp?

10:44 / 12.01.05

Indeed. There's been so much I have wanted to say about my job on my blog but it's just not acceptable to do so, for all sorts of reasons including being considered biased.

When the project is over and I have moved on, then I can tell all the fabulous stories!

Hmmm. But would it be right for Joe the Waterstone's blogger to have been sacked if he had never made any reference to his place of work? So, for example if you couldn't deduce from what he said that he worked at Waterstones in Edinburgh?

10:48 / 12.01.05

Yeah, Richard Morgan's claim that "This bears comparison with taking disciplinary action based on private conversations overheard in a pub" is pushing it a bit, isn't it? As far as I know, you can't yet Google the content of pub conversations, direct other people to recordings of pub conversations, or broadcast to a community of pub conversationalists. His blog patently isn't 'private'.
And to be honest, if my bosses did overhear me in the pub telling all who would listen what evil bastards they are, how I would skive off work if it wasn't such a hassle, and how they can kiss my ass if they don't acquiesce to my holiday demands, I wouldn't get indignant if they reacted badly to it.

Nevertheless, sacking seems like a massive over-reaction and is certainly a peculiar way of hushing something up.

11:06 / 12.01.05

But would it be right for Joe the Waterstone's blogger to have been sacked if he had never made any reference to his place of work? So, for example if you couldn't deduce from what he said that he worked at Waterstones in Edinburgh?

I'd say that if it would not have been obvious that he works for Waterstones, they wouldn't have a case for sacking him. But unfortunately the link has been made in a highly public forum. That's what a lot of people need to remember about the internet: Everything you post here is public. Privacy is pretty much nonexistent, or limited to what you can achieve by publishing under pseudonyms and limiting the degree to which you can be identified by your descriptions of actions and surroundings. Barbelith is a prime example: While we generally carry on as if we were all sitting in a living room having a great chat and a couple of laughs, this living room has glass walls. And there's a couple of thousand people watching our antics.

11:15 / 12.01.05

Nevertheless, sacking seems like a massive over-reaction and is certainly a peculiar way of hushing something up.
...talking of which, has the Guardian article disappeared for everyone else too?

11:25 / 12.01.05

No, it's fine for me. As for the the issue of blogging itself, if you're going to post stuff like this guy did you better make damn sure you can't be traced. That is one reason why we use fiction suits on this board.

11:38 / 12.01.05

Phyrephox: Glasgow bound says: No, it's fine for me.

would u mind pasting the text here, or pm me it or something, i can't seem to access it. thanks!

this is the email for the branch manager at the Princes St Waterstones, manager@edinburgh-eastend.waterstones.co.uk , in case anyone wants to send a message. I emailled saying i'm not spending till he's back.

later

11:47 / 12.01.05

Seriously: if you work at Waterstone's, do you think you can get away with referring to your place of work as Bastardstone's on a website you publish under your own name? It becomes pretty obvious you don't work at Blackwells or Borders.

I'm all for freedom of speech, especially re Weblogs, but really, there's being unnecessarily cautious and there's common sense. Depending on how much you like your job, you should exercise a corresponding level of caution.

Ninjas make great pets

12:15 / 12.01.05

Absotivly posilutly.

Common sense should be used. Odd it wasn't as he is described as an intelligent chap. Ive been known to rant but I don't use actual names or company name unless in a possitive light. Its the smart thing to do, the world is too small to (provibly) badmouth.

There should have been a compromise. A discussion. Its the severity and swiftness that shocked me.

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

12:28 / 12.01.05

Hmm. I nearly got fired from my job in "a famous comic shop" on a couple of occasions for telling customers not to buy stuff cos the manager, or the person doing a signing, or whivhever, was being a dick. Which would have been reasonable, it being company time and all.

And yes, I did, loudly and repeatedly, tell any members of the public who'd listen the same thing. If it had been while I was out of work, I like to think they would have had a harder time making it stick.

12:49 / 12.01.05

One of the points is that even the people that knew him hardly ever read the damn thing. It's also unreadable under Firefox, so most geeks won't have been tuning in, either. How Waterstone's found it is a bit of a mystery, unless he was posting from work (which would be VERY silly). I've met him a few times and he's a sharp enough chap.
Waterstone's, like every big bookseller, is in the habit flushing out the old guard who won't put up with the new kids' corporate bullshit, so I'm not at all surprised they've used this as a pretext to get rid of him. Being good at your job and making money is not as important to shareholders as maintaining the glorious fiction of coherence and stability. Me? Issues with bookselling? [cough]

Tryphena Absent

14:50 / 12.01.05

I think there's discretion and there's discretion- if this was a company where the workers and customers were online regularly in the office than a certain amount of care should be taken in putting the company name on your blog and complaining about them, but he worked for a booksellers and for 11 years- and not in a small capacity. He probably deserved a formal warning, a demand to edit his posts so as not to include the company name but it seems very harsh to fire him.

16:05 / 12.01.05

Does indeed seem a bit harsh

Stoatie- I'm sure the scriptwriters for Spaced have simply been taking notes on your life

16:12 / 12.01.05

If you read blog posts on the issue, it appears that there was a long-running antipathy with the store manager, and the blog thing seems to have just been an excuse.

16:15 / 12.01.05

there was a long-running antipathy with the store manager
Only since upper management had pissed off all the previous local managers so much that they ran off to join the opposition and got replaced. Don't worry about Joe, he's bound to get offered something, soon.