Friday, March 27, 2009

Tweet Revenge

In this wired world of ours, it is amazing how freely we give our information. As my friend Danny over at Digital Dirt can attest, once you put it out there it is pretty hard to take it back. Yet practically on a daily basis I see people posting up on Facebook how much they hate their jobs, how bored they are or even worse, what they are spending their time doing while they are clearly writing from the office. While I have never dissed my job on a social network I am certainly guilty of posting during working hours as well. But at least I try to keep it to a minimum, only putting up vitally important things like weekend plans...so, um, what was my point?

Oh yeah, so back to lamenting your job to the masses - people, if that random girl you vaguely remember who sat next to you in Algebra I (oh so many years ago) can see your post about how you wish you could tell your boss exactly what he can do with his TPS reports, then guess what? Your boss can probably see it too. Awkward.

And if not your boss, then how about your HR department? What do you think all of those people are doing now that the recession has caused so many companies to implement hiring freezes? They are looking for fat to trim, so don't be the bacon!

Clearly, I am no expert. I mean, I joined Twitter along with the other members of my poker group last December so we could keep tabs on each other during a trial run at the Master Cleanse. If you are familiar with it, I am sure you can imagine the lovely posts we were sending out into the Twitterverse about "salt water bathing." I don't think it even occurred to me at that point that other acquaintances might be on as well.

Perhaps "theconnor" another Twitter user thought the same thing when he sent out the following tweet:

Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work.

I read about this on Switched.com, and as much as I love schadenfreude (and by the way I overheard some high-schoolers use that word last weekend and I was utterly amazed, but then skeptical that they might have learned about it from "Avenue Q") I felt bad for the person who, of course, got a response from a Cisco employee. This is nothing new, of course. There are countless other stories of people losing jobs, relationships and even court cases from foolish posts. Let's try harder to keep a few things to ourselves, shall we?

I for one just want to say how much I love my job and the people I work with...for no particular reason, I just like to say it.