Your employer might not like your personal blog, as the latest instance of a personal blog affecting someone's life in a negative way can be seen in the story of Jessica Zenner. She was canned by Nintendo for posting things in her personal blog, which never actually mentioned Nintendo (and she wrote under a pen name). Still, Nintendo found it and gave her the boot.Commenting on the situation, Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan says she "was expressly discouraged from doing what she did. I've seen everything that she's written and it's really not work appropriate." Of course, the situation has arguments for both sides, so we'll leave it up to you to claim who was in the wrong. Jessica or Nintendo?
[Via Kotaku]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-24-2007 @ 12:51PM
pas said...
Hmm... industries have to handle things like this... bad for her, but anyway. I guess Big-N had no other choice (just thinking about what the law possesed Sony had done makes me thank Nintendo for "only" booting her)
Further said: We don't have the right to fall a judgement with only these few lines of text (I think we as the fan"boys" don't have such a right at all, but I think you should get what I mean)
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9-24-2007 @ 12:55PM
JC Fletcher said...
Nintendo is within their legal rights to do this, but it sucks beyond belief that you can get fired for complaining about your job on a blog.
Stuff like that just makes me angry enough to quit my awful job-- uh, I mean, my awesome job.
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9-24-2007 @ 12:57PM
Sancroff said...
Don't do personal computing of any kind at work. Period. Secondly, it is often the case that personal computing is just used as an easy, cut and dried excuse to get rid of you when in reality they want to get rid of you for some other reason which would be messier to address. Is personal blogging the only reason this person was fired? Could be. But I doubt it.
I'm astonished Ms. Kaplan is commenting on personnel matters in public. That's usually a huge no-no.
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9-24-2007 @ 1:07PM
Goldilocks said...
It's hard to form much of an opinion when we don't even have a link to her blog to read for ourselves. Then she wouldn't really have a secret pen name, eh?
However, I agree with Sancroff. No Personal Computing @ Work. And, they were obviously looking into more than that reason alone to fire her, even if it's the only excuse they gave.
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9-24-2007 @ 1:11PM
onepointfivevolt said...
http://inexcusablebehavior.spaces.live.com/blog/ -- there's your link. it's one thing to complain about your job. it's another to directly attack a manager. also, she's a dunce, and she's more than happy to be fired, and concentrating on "her writing" as she keeps saying.
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9-24-2007 @ 2:47PM
Demotruk said...
She insulted her co-workers on a public media. A media that seemingly wasn't hard to find if her boss found it. She may not deserve to be fired, but she shouldn't have been so careless and certainly shouldn't be bitching about people behind their backs where anyone in the world can read it.
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9-24-2007 @ 3:39PM
rainking187 said...
Regardless, I think we can all agree that that's the cutest picture ever.
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9-24-2007 @ 6:06PM
Matthew Hilario said...
such irony! considering i'm currently at work!
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9-24-2007 @ 6:31PM
Chris said...
There was a documentary about a police officer (from the UK) that directly complained about the job - mostly the large amounts of paperwork, and every officer that visted his blog agree'd, he didnt get fired - Im in the UK though where human rights is a load of ****
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9-24-2007 @ 8:02PM
Aaron said...
She sounds like a lousy employee anyway. Good riddance.
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9-26-2007 @ 12:54PM
joetron2030 said...
I think the key here is:
Nintendo's Perrin Kaplan says she "was expressly discouraged from doing what she did. I've seen everything that she's written and it's really not work appropriate."
In other words, she was expressly asked not to do it. But, she did it anyway.
What a moron.
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