Woman let go after rant: 'I guess you forgot about adding me on here?'
In tech terms, it's called a cascading failure.
A woman in Britain being called "Lindsay" made a big one this week, and it cost her her job.
First, she came home after a hard day and, rather than complaining to the cat, decided to do it on the web.
Lindsay opened up her Facebook account and posted a fairly vulgar description of her boss.
"OMG, I HATE MY JOB!" Lindsay wrote. "My boss is a total pervvy wanker always making me do s--- stuff." Mistake No. 2.
Mistake No. 3. was forgetting that her boss was one of her Facebook friends, and thus had access to all of her posted comments.
Mistake No. 4 was firing this broadside two weeks before the end of a six-month trial period.
Five hours after Lindsay posted her lament, her boss replied.
"I guess you forgot about adding me on here?" his post began.
Then he proceeded to rip her straight back.
"That `s--- stuff' is called your `job', you know, what I pay you to do? But the fact that you seem able to f--- up the simplest of tasks might contribute to how you feel about it."
Angry boss then points out that Lindsay is a couple of weeks shy of the end of her trial period and delivers the coup de grâce.
"Don't bother coming in tomorrow. I'll pop your P45 (pink slip) 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."
The Schadenfreude moment appears to be genuine. A screen capture of the exchange – with names blacked out – has been circulating the web for several days.
"It is pretty hysterical," said labour lawyer Mary Beth Currie. "Well, not for her."
According to Currie, the sort of treatment Lindsay received at her boss's hands could also happen in Canada.
"Yes, a termination would be possible," Currie said. "People have to realize that they can't disparage their employer after working hours like this."
It is now normal practice in this country to include a paragraph addressing what can and can't be done on social networking sites into the section of employee agreements covering Internet policy.
"This is not unusual," said Peter Biro, a partner at WeirFoulds LLP. "You're going to see kajillions of cases like this out there."
This is the latest in a series of headline-grabbing stories of irked employees typing and living to regret it.
From a Swiss insurance worker chopped for Facebooking while home ill, to a Brit public relations drone axed for complaining about being "bored" in her work, people are learning the hard way that bad moods are temporary, but the Internet is forever.
Nor would it be the first time someone's been cut via a social networking site. B.C. aesthetician Crystal Bell made headlines in January after she was fired over Facebook, though not for anything she had written online.
In Lindsay's case, the lesson is clear. Choose your (Facebook) friends wisely.
