Sunday 30 December 2007

Pirate at the Job's End

From the New York Times:

many companies are using the Internet to snoop on their employees. If you fail to maintain amorphous “professional” standards of conduct in your free time, you could lose your job.

Source. One example follows:

In a head shot snapped at a costume party, Ms. Snyder, with a pirate’s hat perched atop her head, sips from a large plastic cup whose contents cannot be seen. When posting the photo, she fatefully captioned her self-portrait “drunken pirate,” though whether she was serious can’t be determined by looking at the photo.

...

Ms. Snyder’s student teaching had been unsatisfactory for many reasons. But it affirms that she was dismissed and barred from re-entering the school shortly after the high school staff discovered her MySpace photograph. The university backed the school authorities’ contentions that her posting was “unprofessional” and might “promote under-age drinking.”

Via: "a 25 year-old mother of two that lost her job over a MySpace photo of her as a “drunken pirate” "

Like I said to a student who's blog entry I reported, "I would not, in all honesty, want a potential employer to read what you have posted". You should consider not getting a job, as bad as losing a job, because of your online activities - the aim that we all have is to get you ready for the workplace. Hilarious, isn't it, that a photograph can get someone sacked. Almost as funny as someone reading someone's blog and noting that they've only posted 5 times since the end of August. On a course about blogging.

Ms Snyder is currently contending the case. I'm sure we all wish her well for the future.

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