<p>I’ve tried to obscure this as much as possible. </p>
<p>Supervisor is not well liked, a rather cold fish, not going to be missed by staff. Announced that he would be leaving for a fantastic job elsewhere in a month. Same business, different type of department, higher position.
Staff member worked at the new company and still has friends in this department. Posted on facebook something to the effect that a birdie said they’d be getting a new supervisor.
Many posts followed from both current and future staff. The future staff mostly consisted of wanting to hear the dirt as he was chosen from many applicants with much imput from the future staff.<br>
Comments from the present staff fell along the lines of “uh oh” “good luck” “he should do well in the new place” The most negative comment had to to with his lack of any empathy with staff (not letting staff have an extra day off to travel to a funeral)
This post was discussed at lunch. Supervisor’s spy overheard and told supervisor. Unclear whether or not supervisor saw the actual post. Told a staff member not on facebook to let her cronies know they were going to get fired for slander.
The post was deleted by the staff who started it. I got an hysterical call from her asking if it was true that she could be fired or sued.
While unprofessional, I don’t know that one could be fired over that, free speech and all.
Any thoughts?</p>
<p>Okay, a couple thoughts here. One: free speech doesn’t really come into this. While staff is free to say what ever they know to be true or give their opinion of a person, in a private business, the employer can fire you for just about anything including thinking or saying that your boss is a jerk.</p>
<p>Second, this is not a case of slander/libel. Both slander and libel have to meet the test of expressing a falsehood with the intent to do harm. If the worse they said was that the supervisor lacked empathty, that would not meet the standard (how does one prove that one has empahty??)</p>
<p>My guess is that the company is not about to fire a bunch of people simply for giving their opinion on a employee who is on his way out the door. Sounds like the Supervisor is just throwing his weight around. My advice is to tell her to lay low, keep her mouth shut and stop posting about work on facebook.</p>
<p>I see more examples of adults acting stupid on social networking sites than I do of kids. What is not to understand? I never post anything on my facebook that I would be uncomfortable with the whole world seeing. People act as if they are truly having a private conversation. It is never a good idea to discuss work situations in public and facebook is pretty public.</p>
<p>I have an office and my coworkers have offices. If I am discussing anything which could do damage to me or a coworker if it were in writing or other permanent form, then it’s in my office, their office or a conference room. I don’t put sensitive stuff in email and I don’t use social networking sites.</p>
<p>The employees who posted and participated in this acted unprofessionally and that’s reason enough to fire someone if management decides to do so. If his position at the future company is now withdrawn by that company it seems that he’d have a good cause for a libel suit against the people who participated in this since it could be argued there was a cause/effect (note - I’m not a lawyer).</p>
<p>I don’t understand why anyone, especially an adult, would post stuff like this on the internet. How could they think it wouldn’t ‘get around’? </p>
<p>Anyone who plans to post something they’d be embarrassed for anyone (H, W, friends, boss, etc.) to see should skip the posting.</p>
<p>I know someone who called in sick one day but spent a good part of the day on Face book telling all of her friends all of the good deals she got out shopping. What she forgot is that she had friended her boss. It never crossed her mind because her boss had never really communicated with her on face book. This employee using extremely poor judgement was notified not to return to work for a week as she had provided her own proof of lying and would not be paid for the week. When the union heard the whole story and saw it on facebook they told her to count her lucky stars she wasn’t fired and to enjoy the week off.</p>
<p>^^^
That’s the kind of thing that I just can’t understand. First, why would yo friend your boss? Even if you get along well in the work place, it just isn’t appropriate. And second, how do you forget that you friended your boss? How does that slip your mind.</p>
<p>I could never call in sick and go shopping! I am so paranoid about that kind of thing, I just know I would get caught, without any help from facebook! lol. Not to mention the guilt I would feel for the deception.</p>
<p>Yeah, I don’t think our managers are ‘allowed’ to be friends with their direct employees on social networking for that reason… kind of like an out of sight out of mind type thing. </p>
<p>I never understood the whole calling out falsely sick and getting in trouble for it. I mean, if you get three paid sick days in a year and dont use them, whereas the person next to you uses all three, then they got an extra three days off work. If you call out sick and use them up falsely to go shopping then get sick later and have no days left, then you are out of luck and you played your cards wrong and can enjoy feeling miserable at work that day. We don’t do sick days at my work. We do PTO hours - I have 240 for a year and can take up to 72 of them unscheduled in a year… wether it’s leaving early, calling out, etc. If you call out, you don’t even give a reason. Just hi this is so and so and I won’t be in today or tomorrow or whatever. It’s not a sick day, just 8 hours off out of your PTO bank. I had one day last year where I called out one day because i was sick, and then called my bosses cell and asked him to schedule me on the vacation calender for the next day so that it would just be 8 hours unscheduled instead of 16. It was actually kind of funny because I was so sick I barely had a voice and he couldn’t even make out who he was speaking to on the phone! I told him next time I’d text him, lol!</p>
<p>We’re salaried. You work 100 hours, you get paid the same amount as 30 hours. We get vacation time. If you want more, you take unpaid leave. Basically we hire people that we know are going to work a lot of hours.</p>
<p>I am a teacher and we have to use days in specific ways, sick days, family sick days, bereavement days or personal days (only two of those because we have so many vacations). I like the idea of having a set amount of hours leave and using them for whatever you need. Sometimes I feel like it shouldn’t be anyones business as long as one doesn’t abuse time off.</p>
<p>I like it much better. I mean, 240 hours works out to be six weeks of paid time off (plus you can take unpaid as well). That can be taken by whole day, half day, or in hourly increments (even smaller at times). I had to laugh the other year… it was new years eve and we were at work… our boss was going around telling everyone how much vacation time they had left for the year since it was a use it or lose it situation for most. “7 minutes. 12 minutes. 3 minutes. 28 minutes.” He was like "I can’t wait to look over everybodies time sheets for this week!"b</p>
<p><em>Not a lawyer</em> but from a bit of googling it appears that for a statement to be libelous, it must be, among other things, false. I can hardly imagine that this guy would want a trial that centers around the question of whether or not he’s a jerk, so that threat is completely empty IMO.</p>
<p>Free speech means that the expression of political ideas cannot be suppressed by the government. It does not mean that someone who gossips in a public place (which facebook is) is protected from consequences.</p>
<p>^^^^Right. People seem to think “free speech” means free from all consequences. If I tell one of my patients to bug off, I’m not going to jail, but neither am I going back to work at this job.</p>
It always bothers me to be dishonest, so if I’m not actually sick, I will call in that I have no childcare, my kid is sick, the time my mother fell down the stairs, in the fall we had a tree fall on the house last year so I called in half a day for that, whatever actually caused me to need the day or half day off, and if I just need a day off I call in and say “I’m calling in the day.” Thankfully, I work for a company in which an employee who works hard and doesn’t take advantage can be honest. Of course, I only took one of my four weeks of vacation last year so they love me.</p>
<p>I’ll never forget my first time calling in sick. I was in my first job out of college, and about 2 months in got a flu and called in sick. Happened to be a Friday. Spent the weekend in bed. Monday I went in a got my head chewed off for taking a Friday off - they assumed I’d called in sick to get the long weekend. I was mortified and did not speak up for myself but harbored resentment intstead. Would never sit in that today but at the time I was scared to say anything and so angry I just zipped it and went back to work. Left that job shortly afterward out of dislike for the whole place / culture. Love Fendergirl’s company’s way!</p>
<p>Most people where I work come in to work when they are sick unless they routinely work at home. When people are really, really sick, they work from home so that they can take naps in-between working.</p>