The latest Facebook employee nightmare

Here's the latest Facebook  employee nightmare. According to this report in London's Evening Standard, a woman was recently fired after abusing her boss on Facebook, forgetting she was "friends" with him on the site.

The report suggests the woman, "Lindsay", used some rather colourful language, and described her job in pretty negative terms. Her boss "Brian" responded a few hours later, saying "Hi Lindsay, I guess you forgot about adding me on here?"

He went onto say that her inability to do even the easiest of tasks might contribute to her negative feelings. And then came the coup de grace:

"And lastly, you also seem to have forgotten that you have 2 weeks left on your 6 month trial period. Don't bother coming in tomorrow.

"I'll pop your P45 [tax form completed in the UK when employment ends] in the post and you can come in whenever you like to pick up any stuff you've left here. And yes, I'm serious."

You would have thought that most people would have realised by now that unless you're very careful, using Facebook to criticise your colleagues or your boss is risky. There are plenty of examples of people being fired for this, and of court decisions upholding the sackings.

I suspect "Lindsay" will be a bit more careful next time ...

Greg Cain

 

 

Greg Cain is an employment lawyer at Minter Ellison Rudd Watts.


 

 

 

Photo/ Herald on Sunday