A cautionary tale

I like my job. I want to keep my job. That's why I'll never complain about it here.

However, Amy Norah Burch, an office worker in Harvard's social studies department, thought it was just fine in her blog to threaten to bomb Harvard because she found her co-workers irritating.

Funny? Maybe. But the sheer stupidity of linking your personal blog to your office e-mail is breathtaking.

She called her blog satiric. Her bosses called it grounds for dismissal.

Here's the Harvard Crimson story. Burch also wrote about her firing in a short piece for the Boston Globe's magazine this past Sunday. Here it is (edited a bit for space):

"I used my online diary as a steam valve for my administrative assistant job in Harvard's social studies department. Dealing with obstinate and sometimes nasty professors and students, I found that a quick one - or two - minute rant in my blog would calm my nerves enough so that I could return to productivity. My co-workers took cigarette breaks - how was this any different?"

[From moi: How is it different? Is she high?! No. Just brainless. Alas.]

"To me, blogging became a sort of electronic primal scream, one that saved the eardrums of my neighbors and co-workers . . . until one day last month, when my boss read my blog. Now, it was my own fault that she could access it. ...

I was called into my supervisor's office. ... The HR lady read excerpts from my blog aloud. Coming from a voice other than the one in my own head, the words made me sound like a psycho. I did write things like "I'm two nasty e-mails from professors away from bombing the entire Harvard campus." And "I was seriously livid today. I was ready to get a shotgun and declare open season on all senior faculty members and students who dared cross me."

But in my own head, these words held as much weight as when I'd yelled "I'm going to strangle you!" to my little sister. However, when other people are reading aloud only the offending entries (a small minority, I maintain), it's no wonder that I am labeled dangerous.

I tried to explain my position - "I'm harmless!" "I was just venting" "I never used last names!" Still my employment was terminated, effective immediately. May 24 was my last day. My heat-of-the -moment rants were labeled "extreme misconduct," even though my employer of four years couldn't prove my performance had suffered in any way. ...

I suppose the lesson here is to make rants less accessible to the public. I shouldn't have had a link to my blog on my home page and freely given out my home page address. However, the HR people seemed to insinuate that even had my work e-mail signature not contained a link to my home page, the things I had written would have been grounds for dismissal.

This is where things get murky. I question whether employers have the right to fire people for ranting in online diaries. What if I had gone out to lunch with friends and read aloud from a diary I kept beside my bed? Could Harvard have fired me for that? I didn't reveal any secrets online. I didn't harm anyone's reputation. It doesn't seem right that I should be punished for having and sharing opinions.

[Darlin', what you did was beyond kvetching to your friends. You literally put your rants in front of potentially millions of readers. You putz.]

Daily diary entries have always been an important part of my life. I doubt this will scare me into going back to the old composition book and pen. But in the future, I will be more careful about how accessible I make my blog. I definitely won't put any personal links in my work e-mail signatures. Maybe I'll try harder to conceal the identities of parties mentioned. I'll still write about work, as I don't foresee a job where I'm happy 100 percent of the time. Actually, if I am, I'll definitely write about it."

I hope she likes blogging about working at Dunkin' Donuts ....