Thursday, June 11, 2009

The Worst Blogging Advice Ever

Mary Sanchez laments the sad fate of a blogging waitress who was fired from her job for blogging about being a waitress.

Should a witty blog about your job get you fired?

The short answer to this question, is YES, you fucking moron!

"The restaurant server predicted her own demise when she posted these words: “Well, here goes suicide by blog. Stay tuned for the fallout."

Good call. One might almost say, prophetic.

The stupidest thing any blogger can do is blog about their real life, their real job, or their real employer's customers.

Mary seems to disagree.

"The terms “well-written” and “blog” usually don’t coexist locally. But this KU journalism graduate and Wichita native followed the axiom for novice and professional writers alike — write what you know."

Unless you plan on being an unrelenting, enthusiastic shill for who you work for and what you do for a living, this is the dumbest fucking advice in the world.

If you create a blog for the sole purpose of making fun of your job, your employer, and your employer's customers, don't get your panties in a twist when your employer finds out about your blog (as they almost always will) and decides that your continued employment and blogging are not compatible with their corporate strategy and goals.

Ever heard of a "firewall"? It's the thing that protects your PC from getting hacked by the "evil doers".

Bloggers need to have a firewall between the shit they say on their blogs and who they are in real life.

If you don't establish and enforce this firewall of anonymity, there are only 2 outcomes:

1. Your ability to freely express yourself online will be constrained by the fear of real world repercussions such as possible loss of employment, alienation of family, and other unpleasant consequences.

2. You will blatantly flaunt the above precautions, your friends, family and employers WILL find your blog, you WILL be fired, you WILL be denied future opportunities, and you WILL be sorry you every peed in the Internet pool.

If, like me, you view blogging as a creative outlet where you get to say whatever the fuck you want to say because you need to blow off steam, DO NOT follow the advice of Mary Sanchez, local Social Media gurus, or anyone else who uses terms like "Web X.x", "personal branding" or "off the keyboard".

But if you want to turn the mythological "Permanent Record" into a reality and hand it all of your info on a Silver Platter, then by all means, "blog about what you know". I'm sure future employers will be chomping at the bit to hire you when they easily find out that you made derogatory blog posts that you thought were "witty and insightful" about your former employer and their customers.

Because what employer doesn't want it's employees undermining their business and driving away their customers?

4 comments:

FletcherDodge said...

Waitaminute! Don't we have a constitutionally protected freedom of speech in this country?

I think government regulators need to step in with lots of rules that keep evil corporations from making "business decisions" to pursue profits by firing employees just because Human Resources thinks they are undermining the precious bottom lines by exercising their rights to express themselves.

We need the government to protect bloggers from their bosses!

Nick said...

sorry, emaw: government regulators are too busy anonymously blogging to create those much needed rules...

X.O. - just so you know, all permanent records are kept in a dank subbasement of a crumbling downtown St. Louis Federal building...

MoxieMamaKC said...

I totally agree with you, XO. Blogging about work/family is STUPID!!! You're just waiting for a pink slip or ruined relationship. I'm not sure why, but the Mary Sanchez column really pissed me off. Especially her slam on bloggers. She's official an idiot in my book. Anonymous blogging is the way to go.

Faith said...

I think there's a fine line that can be drawn. I, for example, am an admin assistant, and for most people that read my blog, that is not a secret.

However, I would never talk about the specific company I work for, my boss, my other coworkers, or even what industry I'm currently in. I can say that I disclosed my industry previously, but it didnt come back to bite me in any way because I'M NOT A REAL PERSON ON MY BLOG. Faith Smith does not exist.

Or does she?

Why is that so hard for people to do? Stupid fucking peole wanting to make money from their social blogging...