Slave to your employer? Too chicken to blog? Tell me! I will blog for you!
The bold and visionary Charlotte Observer ran another item about blogging.
Here are some excerpts:
People write blogs to talk about their day, family outings, dates gone awry and, of course, work. But what might feel like a personal entry about a dismal workday can mean something quite different to a boss who needs only a search engine to read it.
So bloggers blog about:
- their day
- family outings (gay?)
- dates gone awry
- work
Well blow me down. I've never blogged about these things. Thanks for the tips! How exciting! But what's this? If I blog about work...I will googled by the bossman and threatened or fired? Oooooo. Scary! Lose the job!
"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."
Chatty, catty and crude. Sounds like David Brock's description of Anita Hill, back when he was a lying liar. But if companies don't want to be portrayed by their emplyees badly...fix the company! As Harry Beckwith says, if you can't write a good ad...fix the product, then write it. Fix the broken company. Wheels are squeaking.
And then comes this standalone sentence of warning to those who would blog:
Usually the blogger has little protection.
How Bush-like to use fear as a tool!
It continues to threaten:
"In most states," said Gregg Lemley, a St. Louis labor lawyer, "if an employer doesn't like what you're talking about, they can simply terminate you."
Conversely, in all states, if you don't like what you employer is doing, you can simply quit...and then blog your heart out.
The article rambles on then runs out of gas, never really offering an upside. But this is the Washington Post, carried by the Charlotte Observer. It is not the Greensboro News & Record. Viva la difference!
