As I was thinking of what to put on my About Me section, the inevitable question arose: should I post my picture or not?
I looked at other bloggers I follow: @na at How to wash a shower curtain and the all-time favorite Katie’s at Twenty Something, and they both have their pictures up. They both talk about personal things as well as their feelings about work. Still, it does not stop them from “facing” their readers (who may include their family members and coworkers). So, am I being paranoid to overthink this?
What am I afraid of, exactly? Mostly retaliation from my company. Because of this fear, I came out to HR and told them that I had a blog and I did speak about work. They said that as long as I wasn’t writing anything explicit about the company, its products, customers, or inner-workings in a way that would be damaging to them, I should be alright. I should be all set for all those facts, since I do keep my entries somewhat vague and never reveal my company’s name. However, people who do know me know where I work, and anyone who sees my picture will be able to tie my entries to my company.
In a perfect world, freedom of speech and expression are untouchable. But then you read things like these, and it makes you wonder:
- Bored Teenage Office Worker Fired over Facebook Entry (the teenager never mentioned the name of the company)
- Dooce: a coined term based on Heather Armstrong’s firing over her personal blog at dooce.com
- Employee fired by Starbucks over blog (the employee kept a personal blog to update family and friends, and he used it to vent about his boss, whose name he never even revealed)
- Flight Attendant Fired for Blogging (supposedly for posing inappropriate pictures in uniform, when in fact it was just pictures of her and her coworkers, just like many other male counterparts had posted online)
- Have a blog, lose your job? (an article about the fired bloggers)
- Nintendo employee fired over blog (she wrote anonymously under a pen name)
Not even a pen-name can save you nowadays… but what is considered inappropriate? Am I allowed to share my feelings about my job and my career out there? Is this just about blogging during work hours? The law doesn’t seem to be on the side of bloggers… if it was, then companies would have to identify who in the organization is actually doing non-work related activities during work hours, not just blogging.
The jury is still out on this one, so I’m going to have to play it safe and continue to censor myself: no picture, no company name, no talk of coworkers, no blogging at work, no explicit mention of my dissatisfaction with the actual work or company environment itself…. wow, that last one is going to be tough. How do you prevent people from speaking up about their current experiences? Whatever happened to freedom of speech? I guess it’s dead and it costs too much money and time in lawyers and courts to make it worth all of our whiles. This is how dictatorship works, you know? They got their thumb on you until you decide it’s not worth the aggravation.
It’s just messed up.
ina