Blogging is turning out to be really dangerous. I read in the Sunday Times yesterday how Petite Anglaise (photo from her blog) got dooced. Her boss didn’t approve of her blogging about her sex life and showed her the door. Suspendered, she wittily headlined her sad story which she wrote without a trace of self-pity.
The suspension without pay she alluded to in her headline was actually a notice of dismissal. A single mother in Paris, she is coping with her job loss with her chin up, at least in public. Not that she is going down without a fight. The 33-year-old secretary is hoping to sue the British accountancy firm which sacked her, reported the Sunday Times.
It seems she made the same mistake as Dooce (Heather B Armstrong) who says: "I got fired because I had written stories that included people in my workplace." Petite Anglaise, or Catherine, got into hot water because she was naughty, according to the Sunday Times which doesn’t give her full name. It says:
"Her employers, it seemed, were less keen on Petite’s online antics than her 3,000 daily readers. They took umbrage with entries such as Titillation (from May 2005) describing her struggle to set up a video link between the firm’s Paris and London boardrooms, in which her cleavage became the accidental star."
She had fun describing the wardrobe malfunction:
‘Clearly I hadn’t got the webcam angle quite right, and there I am, in my full glory, my V-necked jumper revealing a little more than I would have liked. I have managed not only to show my breasts, but also to swear in front of Old School Boss. A sea of smirking faces swim into view. It would appear that their meeting room was already occupied too, with a full complement of London board members.’ "
Yes, she was naughty. But she wasn’t naming names, using cute/funny nicknames instead to be on the safe side, and yet she got the sack.
Partners at the firm alleged that she made herself and therefore the firm identifiable by including her own photograph on the weblog, reported the Telegraph.
It makes one wonder if there’s any safe way to blog at all except using an anonymizer and pretending to be a man if one’s a woman, a secretary if actually working as an executive, and building a persona that’s just the opposite of one’s real self — and blogging The Big Lie.
I just did a Google search for fired bloggers and came up with only two lists, put up by Morpheme Tales and The Papal Bull. There’s no such list at all on the Wikipedia, the MSN or the BBC. The BBC has posted an article on how to blog and keep your job, but I guess it’s best done with one’s fingers crossed and a prayer to the Lord.
Question: How do you blog with your fingers crossed?
Answer: Tricky, very tricky.
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Safe way to blog? I think it’s to use common sense. Although some people tell me there’s no such thing as “common” sense. Plenty of bloggers out there still have their jobs and have productive blog-lives. So what’s their secret?