How to handle an employee's offensive social media post

wow, that’s incredible but sadly these days to be expected until people finally say enough with all this nonsense. Nowadays they come up with micro aggressions and triggering whatever, I mean the left has become totally insane with this where the hell is it gonna end.

Many people post under screen names and people do not know who they are.

I’ve heard this described as the rule of the mean girls.
The cries of “I’m offended” is the ultimate heckler’s veto, a hard stop based on someone else’s soft weak spirit, all too often driven by a cruel, manipulative person who wants to dominate from a subordinate/victim position.
They cry out their victimhood and drive others to suppress freedom and thought, in the name of being nice.

If you post something about your hooknosed kike boss on FR... you may lose your job... and be Zotted on top of it.

</sarc>

What’s a Face Book?

She didn’t “turn me in”, but someone else reported me to HR as homophobic.

I would have burned down the building... but that's just me.

One activity of Leftist activists is to try to discover background data about outspoken conservative commentators, and then harass the person’s employer. It won’t matter that YOU did not mention your employer. All it takes is for somebody knowing something about you and deciding to “out” you to the Left.

This is why I don’t use Facebook, and don’t even tell my wife what pseudonyms I comment under when online.

Thank God I am self employed

Really? You have no customers?

In my case...correct...I am my only customer! (...in a prior business, my customers were 99% attorneys...that was fun...)

We have a Social Media policy at my present employer. And it is not really that egregious or restrictive of “free speech” and contains some pretty common sense sort of stuff.

I don’t have the policy in front of me but as I recall, it says things like employees are not to post to the company’s FB or Twitter, You Tube or other company owned and managed social media accounts without prior approval from the Marketing department. Those accounts belong to the Company and are not meant to be a forum for employees to post their personal opinions on any subject or their personal grudges or grievances or pet peeves regarding the company.

Even an employee’s positive and well intentioned comments about the company or one of our products, especially products in development, could inadvertently divulge trade secrets or information the company would like to keep confidential and so requires prior approval. A lot of this is also covered in our Protecting Trade Secrets and Non-Disclosure policies and extends not just to social media sites, but also things like written editorial letters to newspapers where the employee self identifies themselves as a current or former employee is also covered.

As far as an employee’s personal social media (FB, Twitter, Linkedin, blogs, etc.), it says something along the lines that employees should not mention the company directly in their posts and or in doing so make disparaging remarks about the company, its management, our parent or affiliated companies, our products, policies, vendors or customers and of course not divulging confidential information, trade secrets or in any way assume or attempt to pass off their personal opinions as belonging to or being endorsed by the company.

For example, if I post to my personal FB page or other social media that “people who voted for Obama deserve to get screwed by Obamacare”, that wouldn’t get me into trouble (although working the HR department, I have to be particularly cautious about what I post if it could be seen by other’s than my FB friends*).

However if I post, especially in a publicly viewable manner; “I, Jane Doe (my real name) work for XYZ Company (the actual company I work for) and you can’t believe how many of the idiots in management here, especially the President of the company “dumb Frank” (his real name) and our HR Director “Jill”, (her real name), an AA hire and giant nasty and smelly Afro wearing jigaboo Lesbo, who isn’t even qualified to be a janitor, voted for Obama, but then that explains why XYZ Company is going to post poor earnings in tomorrow’s quarterly earnings reports and why our latest new product failed quality control in its first production run and is a giant Cluster - F.”; that would likely and should get me fired. **

Likewise posting something like; “I work in sales for XYZ Company and one of my customers, the ABC Company, the owner is one of those Fundy Born Again Christians. This guy Fred is just too stupid to live and I make sure I never give him our best pricing because he’s really too stupid to know any better”; that should also get me fired. No?

As far as monitoring FB and other social media sites, we do not actively monitor them (although I previously worked for a company where the owner allegedly did) and we do not require employees to divulge what social media sites they belong to nor require them to give over their ID log ins or passwords; something that I think should be illegal for any employer to demand. And FWIW, social media sites including FB and Twitter and many other internet sites are blocked on our company’s internet filter, except for those in marketing who have to update those belonging to the company and for our HR Director and out HR recruiter.

But even in recruiting, we do not routinely, and in fact very rarely if ever check a candidate’s social media footprint unless we have a very good reason to do so, such as being tipped off by something negative or questionable in their background check.

For instance the candidate puts on their application that they graduated with a BS in Accounting from Penn State but the background check is not able to confirm this and the candidate is not able to provide a copy of their diploma or even a college transcript confirming that they even attended this school and we check to see if the candidate has a publicly viewable FB page, and low and behold, right on their FB page, they say “highest education - Reading HS” – no mention of going to or ever graduating from any college. Now a FB profile is not exactly a good or reliable means of performing a legitimate and legally conforming background check, but it may lead us to not making an offer; not because of the FB posting alone, but because it confirmed to us why the candidate and the background check company was not able to provide proof of their degree.

As far as HR checking social media; I do know of a case of a protracted and highly questionable workers comp claim a few years ago.

In this case the worker was claiming a debilitating work related back injury but the doctors could not confirm the injury by any medical exams, they were all inconclusive, except for having the worker’s word of being in extreme pain, not able to move and not able to work, able to perform not only his job but also claiming to not be able to perform any work offered to him under the doctor’s suggested work restrictions, and FWIW, no one at work had observed the injury when it allegedly took place and he didn’t report it until several days after it allegedly happened.

It was actually one of his co-workers and one of his “FB friends” who tipped HR off that he was faking his injury and told us that he had posted on his FB page, pictures of his post accident and recent hunting trips; pictures showing him pitching tents, building a tree stand and hiking through the deep woods while carrying a heavy back pack and carrying on his back, a deer out of the woods and posting pictures of him gutting this very large deer in his garage, something he actually bragged about it on his FB page.

And low and behold, right on his FB account and postings, which BTW had no privacy settings and was viewable to anyone and everyone with a FB account, yes there were pictures of him doing exactly what his co-worker had claimed; he had posted these pictures and they were time stamped and he even posted comments like “pictures of my hunting trip last weekend” and “nice to have the time off LOL” and with a post accident date on them. On counsel of our workers comp insurer and our employment attorney, we couldn’t use his FB postings alone to refute and or deny the workers comp claim, but it was enough evidence for our workers comp insurer to put him under “observation”.

That basically meant that a PI was employed by the workers comp insurer to track and observe his daily movements and this PI took pictures of this supposedly too injured to work, in severe and debilitating back pain, guy doing things like hauling very heavy trash cans from his garage to the curb and working on building a new deck on the back of his house.

Stupid is as stupid does. He was caught in a big lie and his workers comp claim was eventually denied and he was permanently terminated for cause and for fraud and was sued by the workers comp insurance company for the lost time wages and medical expenses they had paid related to his fraudulent claim.

I also know of a case from a friend and former co-worker working in HR/Payroll at another company, where an employee was suspected of abusing their rather generous bereavement policy.

Within a course of one year, this employee took her 3 days of paid bereavement leave for each “close relative death” numerous times; first her grandmother died, then her grandfather died, then her aunt, then an uncle and then her brother, then her sister …. FWIW, at the time, this company didn’t require a death certificate or a posting of funeral arrangements in a local paper in order to get the paid bereavement leave - they just took the employee’s word for it and there wasn’t a limit of total hours of bereavement leave per year, but only the max of 3 days per “incident” for the death of a close relative. But this employee was taking so many paid bereavement leaves in such a short time that HR and her manger became suspicious.

They checked her FB page, that had no privacy settings and found her posting on the very same days that she was allegedly taking off 3 days of paid bereavement leave to attend her sister’s funeral out of state, that she had actually taken a trip to Las Vegas and posted pictures of her supposedly dead sister and herself in Vegas, and even making comments like; “My sister is “dead”, but we are still “living” it up in Vegas. Vegas Baby!” And “What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!” And “A paid va-cay on my employer’s dime all because I told them my sister died. Is my boss really that stupid? LOL!”

When she came back to work the next Monday, she found herself out of a job, all her personal belongings boxed up and security escorting her out of the building. She filed an unemployment claim but it was denied based on her FB postings and her inability to prove that her sister had actually died.

And because of this sort of abuse, this company instituted a new bereavement leave policy, one that stated that anyone taking bereavement leave going forward would have to provide either a death certificate and or a funeral announcement in a local news paper listing them by name as a relative of the deceased and their relation to the deceased and or provide some sort of proof that they are related to the deceased in order to get the paid bereavement leave and they also put a limit of 6 days max per year of paid bereavement leave; anything over that requires the employee to cover it out of their PTO bank, i.e. their paid vacation leave bank.

* FB actually has privacy settings that many people are seemingly unaware of. I have a FB account to mostly keep in touch with family and friends, mostly those out of state, but I have my privacy settings so that only my “friends” and “friends of friends” can see my posts. And if I make a post that I only want my direct friends and no others to see, I can do that. If you are not one of my confirmed FB friends, anyone with a FB account - all you can see is that I have a FB account and whatever basic demographic info I choose to share and not any of my posts or my comments to other friend’s posts. And FWIW, I do not and never list my employer on any social media sites nor do I accept friend requests from co-workers unless they are actually my very close and personal friends and people that I can actually trust.

** This was a purely hypothetical example. I do not know how any one at work voted for nor do I care or make it my personal or professional business to know, whether they supported Obama or not and my HR director and my boss is in no way what I described in this purely hypothetical example.