Beware of Being Dooced
Becareful what you blog about because employers are increasingly taking action and firing employees who complain about their jobs on their weblogs.
There are 8 million personal Web logs — or blogs — in the United States, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. People write blogs to talk about their day, family outings, dates gone awry and, of course, work. But what might feel like a very personal entry about a dismal workday can mean something quite different to a boss who needs only a search engine to read it.
“We all complain about work and our bosses. And the ethos of the blogosphere is to be chatty and sometimes catty and crude,” said Lee Rainie, director of the Pew project. “Even in an era of casual Fridays, that is not what companies want to be portrayed by the world.”
Even if workers write the blog anonymously, an employer may be able to take the position that blogging “is inconsistent with the business mission,” said Jonathan A. Segal, an employment attorney in Philadelphia.
Usually the blogger has little protection. “In most states,” said Gregg M. Lemley, a St. Louis labor lawyer, “if an employer doesn’t like what you’re talking about, they can simply terminate you.”
And that is happening enough that there is even a word for it — getting “dooced.” Blogger Heather B. Armstrong coined the phrase in 2002, after she was fired from her Web design job for writing about work and colleagues on her blog, Dooce.com.
