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There's a moral here somewhere
By adamg on Tue, 11/13/2007 - 10:54pm
If you're an intern at the Boston office of a multinational bank and you ask your boss for time off for a family emergency in New York, don't assume he won't then check your Facebook page and discover that you actually went to a Halloween party in Worcester - and that he won't then forward around the picture of you in a revealing costume you really don't have the body for.
Via John Cass.
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Comments
Seems fake.... Even if it
Seems fake.... Even if it is real, how do they know that party was actually on Halloween night? Most parties I know of are on the friday or saturday before.
I hope this kid was completely on the level, and sues them for libel for sending that to the whole office and insinuating he was lying
A reporter talked to the boss
Well, OK, a boss with the same first name at the bank in question who declined to comment.
Still dubious
Perhaps the boss believed the picture was what it was claimed to be, but that proves nothing in itself. We don't know whether the Facebook pictures were dated; they might not even have been from the same year. The person who reported this employee was obviously acting with malice, and so might have been trying to deceive the boss with an old picture.
Facebook
Its seems that the intern and his boss have equally poor judgment. Posting a picture like this of yourself on the internet is a bad move. Plenty of interviewers do a search for your on-line before your interview to see whether your paper matches your real life. But the boss sending this picture to the whole company and suggesting he was lying? Is the guy following "The Office" guide to management?
Nothing wrong
There's nothing wrong with posting that picture. The guy was stupid to post it in his profile if it is set to be "public" (or was stupid to post it at all if his boss is his "friend" in Facebook which gives the boss access to everything the guy posts). In other words, Facebook gives you the tools to filter those you want and don't want to have access to your personal submissions. Posting the picture wasn't the bad move; it was not maintaining better regulation of what you post. If you are going to lie to your boss and then post proof of the lie where he will find it, then you deserve what is coming to you. Even so, the boss did act very unprofessional by sending it to the entire staff. HR discussions with employees should be held in the strictest of confidence or you not only run aground of potential legal issues, but you may irreparably harm your staff's morale.
As for future companies finding a picture like that, if a company can't see the normalcy in a fun-loving halloween partier, then I'm not sure I'd want to work for that company. Also, no future employer is going to find a pic like that if you don't want them to (again, lock your profile and these things don't happen).
Dude, he worked for a bank
Its good to know that Facebook allows you to post things out of the public eye but, come on, this guy works for a bank. I can understand if you don't want to work for a bank, but if you do you should have a little more common sense than to throw this stuff up on the web (unless you would wear it to work, in which case please let me know what bank you work for).
How the Business World Eats Its Young
This was an internal disciplinary matter at the company, and to humiliate a young (unpaid?) intern like this was completely unprofessional and out of line. It is not great to be the absolutely lowest life form on the white-collar-office-chain-gang to begin with. I would not be surprised if the kid escaped it on some pretext. (Who hasn't called in sick for a "mental health day"?) Meanwhile, presumably even interns don't have to work at night, so what this fellow does after hours is his own damn business. Maybe the photo WAS taken in New York (someone referenced a Yankees cap in the background). Maybe it WAS taken the weekend before. The jerk in the story is not the intern but his supervisor, who obviously had an possibly unprofessional interest in him. Who the heck looks up their young employees on Facebook? How creepy!
Nothing in any of the
Nothing in any of the articles I've read lead me to believe without a doubt that the person himself posted that photo. On facebook, your friends can post pictures and tag them so that it's known you are in the photo. It's very possible HE did not post that in a public manner, but someone at the party, most likely whoever took the photo, did.