Remember, your readership may be wider than you think.

[denny]

A bookseller has become the first blogger in Britain to be sacked from his job because he kept an online diary in which he occasionally mentioned bad days at work and satirised his "sandal-wearing" boss.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/weblogs/story/0,14024,1388466,00.html

(yoinked from katyha's journal)


Personally, I think this was a bit OTT. He shouldn't have expected to make any friends at work with those entries (well, not with his boss anyway), but they're hardly "gross misconduct" in my opinion.

Comments

[ergotia.livejournal.com]

Agreed - I think if he appeals and/or takes them to a Tribunal he will win.

[dynamitebebe.livejournal.com]

Here's the Waterstones one's blog in question http://www.woolamaloo.org.uk/

[robinbloke.livejournal.com]

This is why I lock anything even vaguely related to work.

[mejoff.livejournal.com]

"Remember, your readership may be wider than you think."
so I've discovered!

[djlongfella.livejournal.com]

After 11 years service and posts that do no detriment to the company or rather posts that can not be proved to have affected sales, I think they are in a very weak position for grounds of " Gross Missconduct "... I think their lawyers will be quaking a bit after being informed of this decision, however we do not know the employee's full work history, he may well have been on his final warning for other matters.

What is bad about this, is that after 11 years service, haveing " let him go " for Gross missconduct, his x empluers are not oblidged to supply him with a reference ( It's the only occaision where an emplyer can refuse a reference )

[dennyd.livejournal.com]

Fortunately for him, he has the very sincere support of several well-known authors - people like Neil Gaiman and Ken MacLeod have posted in their online journals saying that they think Waterstones were insane to let this guy go - they personally know him from when he'd organised book-signing events and stuff, and they think he was really really good at his job. I think that's probably a pretty good reference :)