DANGER! BLOGGERS AT WORK!

The Phenomenon

Many employers had never heard of the massively popular and growing Internet phenomenon of “blogging”. Still less did they comprehend that they might be featuring as the heroes, or more probably the villains, in their employees’ vivid on-line accounts of daily life. That was until the massive and unwelcome publicity generated by the recent “Waterstone’s Case”, involving the dismissal of its employee of 11 years’, Joe Gordon.

Mr Gordon set up his blog, “The Woolamaloo Gazette” back in 1992. He explains that he uses it to “vent steam on stories that are bugging me” and believes that “satire is the best defence in any democracy”. Whilst venting his spleen, Mr Gordon often lampooned his employer, especially when the working relationship with his line manager started to turn sour. He referred to his employer as “Bastardstone’s”, (although he did not name the branch at which he worked), and made derogatory comments about his “sandal wearing evil boss”. On discovering this, the company promptly sacked Mr Gordon for gross misconduct.

Mr Gordon’s dismissal caused an immediate and hugely public backlash against the company which is still continuing. This initially started, (as perhaps Waterstone’s should have predicted), in the on-line blogging community itself. The Woolamaloo Gazette became instantly famous. Links to it were made not only by indignant bloggers for whom Waterstone’s action had sounded a warning that “It Could Be You”, but also in on-line statements of support by prominent authors for whom the popular, and evidently well-liked, Mr Gordon had arranged signings and other events. From there it was a short hop for the story to reach the conventional media but, as is becoming increasingly the case, the newspapers, radio and television lagged well behind the blogging community so far as getting the scoop was concerned.

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