Facebook is not as private as you think

If you thought your personal life and your professional life could be separate, you may want to rethink that. There’s a waitress down in North Carolina who is looking for another job because of it. She waited on a couple who kept her past her clock out time and compensated her with a $5 tip. She went home and griped about it on Facebook, mentioning her job by name, and was summarily fired. There’s a couple of things to keep in mind when reading this. First, we’re assuming the $5 tip was less than the customary %10-%15 gratuity that we have adopted culturally. Second, businesses have taken to Facebook for advertising and promotional purposes, so brand protection on a social networking site is critical to success in today’s business. Third, you have to realize that you are a representative of where you work, and if you project yourself in an area that is a marketing hotbed for your job, people are going to notice, customers and employers. That being said, my question is how did this comment come to light? Was a manager or the business owner looking at their employees on Facebook to keep tabs on them? If that’s the case, then the real story is more about who is monitoring employees like this, which makes it slightly creepier.