This week, after surfing the internet and doing random things the you simply do when you have lots on your plate to do, the housework, learning for exams, not writing the podcast, going to gym etc and you really don’t want to do them, I stumbled onto this news story :

Nintendo fires Worker for Blogging

It was a rather interesting tale of how someone who worked for a major corporation contracting as a recruiter lost her job after the bosses at Nintendo found her personal blog, which she described that a bonus of working with someone there gave her a great excuse to drink heavily.

It appears that blogging was not banned but it was not encouraged. The writing of the woman in question was not work appropriate. And this story got me thinking.

I have been writing this blog over a year now and in that time I have been writing while in the employ of two big I.T. outsourcing players. The type of things written on this portal to the inner Hughes have been one of where relationships have gone wrong, where I have cried foul at people and situations. Where I meander in and out through the thread of my existence on the planet Earth and basically write here as a method of expression and in all honesty now, a way of extending my writing skills so in perhaps in future I maybe able to pursue this.

After all, who would pass up the chance to write about this life we all find ourselves in, about the little things which we all take for granted. Though I suppose if you are paid by the word you are going to have to be pretty damned talented to stretch out a story about picking your nose.

For instance you would have to be able to describe the whole contents of the said nose, for all of us there are unknown dangers and hair. The danger is that the green menace will rear it’s ugly juicy head whenever you sneeze and it so happens to be in front of your friends and they never let you forget it either. Or it could be the really bad ones that get stuck on your hairs and then at some point you just have to go in there, like on the beaches of Normandy and rid yourself of the snotty Reich. Just without the help of Tom Hanks.

But I am getting off the point again! Wow, I never do that do I? Oooh, some cheese……

(5 minutes later)

The whole point of this post is to wonder what would happen if the bigwigs at the firm where I work now were to come on here, take a look at what I had been writing all this time and decided it would bring the company into disrepute.

Would I lose the job I worked hard on over things which occurred outside the work premises? It would then mean that I anything that I say or do would be subject to the work’s practises. I know of course, if I were to get arrested then my employment would look in bad shape, of course it would. But things which are said in the public realm outside of work surely would come under free speech.

Remember what I said about Norwich Union a little while ago, and I had the response from one of the “Blog Change Agents” to try and sort it all out. If they were really wanting to destroy the bad publicity, they could have sued for slander, granted the facts of what has happened so far would have saved me because of the length of time it has taken for the whole car business to be settled, but not without costing me a fortune and therefore more than likely succeeding in taking down this web site.

If companies like Norwich Union have people employed as “Blog Change Agents” you makes you wonder as to the power of such sites. Are we getting to the point where people blogs have the ability to bring down companies? Well being honest no.

The definition of a blog is for lack of a better description, an online diary, kept by all sorts of people in all walks just talking about whatever they want. But not everyone is famous from writing a blog, over taking the various “jor-narly-lists” and “bigwigs” we have these days. Have you ever bumped into someone who wrote a blog and therefore could walk into a very expensive restaurant and have a table ready for him/her in seconds because of that?

If you have you are a effing lier! so NUH!

And back to the blog issue, here we would have to determine the line where the freedom of speech stops and company policy starts. This would not only be on this blog but on most written material out there.

And because I am one of the little people and not seen as powerful and able to wield that power on the public to sway them against anyone, they can quite easily put a stop to anything if they want to. What the woman did in this case was bad-mouth her co-workers but the problem I have is that people do that all the time, but they do it sneakily behind others and I would think that blogs are an extension of the “WaterCooler” moments we all have these days.

If I were working in America, frankly I don’t think I would be able to write this. I would only write about fluffy kittens and balls of yarn (oh what fun they are 🙂 ) and therefore wouldn’t annoy anyone.

But I don’t. I live in the UK, a place where it seems for the moment, I am allowed to write what I like and therefore can really get things off my chest. Because if I didn’t have this, you would wonder how else the annoyance would manifest itself?

I wouldn’t be so motivated to write half as much and this little thing has brought out the creative troll that lives under my bridge, he nicked the keyboard, first tried to play solitaire just using his elbows and then started making words appear on this big screen thing I’m sat in front of.

Of course the other side of the fence is:

Is it acceptable? Remember just because things are written in cyberspace doesn’t mean they won’t effect anyone. It’s like saying in front of your sister, to someone near you “My sister, she likes like a cross between Sloth from the Goonies and some afterbirth.” It’s just not cricket, you see. Granted it can be funny but as always you will find someone that is hurt by your remarks. I know from past experience that it can be the case and I have hurt people on the way while writing these very pages.

Though I must point out on the record that for one person I did it for a cheap laugh and it worked, so no regrets there! 🙂 Just as in real life you should say things in an appropriate time and place, so too the same rules apply out here, because at the other side of the screen is another human (or gorilla) reading what you have written and passing judgement on that. You never know, someone in the workplace may just want to have a word with you. Beware good people, your words are seen by more than you know.

Cool ain’t it?