Complicated Situations

It is no mystery to anyone that perhaps has read my blog previously that I like to speak my mind. I don't tend to censor my thoughts and I often speak without thinking. A problem that yes in past has gotten me in trouble. Trying to learn my lesson I've started to watch what I say at work and try to just buckle down and do my job. However word of mouth no longer seems to be the problem most people are facing.

Now more than ever there are more ways to incriminate yourself by speaking your mind. Enter social networking and the blogosphere. The blog (hence why I refuse to post my name or place of work in any way shape or form on here) where people have been caught bashing bosses, mocking managers, and criticizing coworkers is no longer a place to speak our minds in a way that is harmless....these days it can get you canned. With Facebook and the current trend of documenting every single move we make, (we used to all fear big brother and yet now we offer in the information up willingly...go figure) we are forced to become more recluse than ever.

So why might I be bringing this up? Well recently a situation where allegations over facebook posts have been brought to light through a complaint made about a co-worker at work. For the purposes of this post I shall call the co worker accused of abusing sick days S and the worker accusing S of being sick A. So basically how its all cracking down is that A told the manager that S took sick time off work but yet somehow managed to take her kid to a bunch of events on the weekend, and perhaps instead of taking vacation leave she just abused her sick leave. In the process A copied all the facebook posts from that weekend and handed them into the manager to start poking around. S's manager then starts asking about her sick days and how they are being covered. The untold story? S is a single mom. Truth be told they don't usually have the luxury of having a weekend off and well while I might personally object to the fact that this particular person didn't seem to think taking care of herself was important, I can't blame them for just carrying on.

So this whole situation has me thinking about social networking and just working in general. When you have a full time job and spend on average somewhere between 30-40 hours a week with people in close quarters, you tend to get to know them pretty well, whether you want to or not. If you work together, one would think that you'd all be working towards a common goal, and therefore would want everyone to be happy.  But that doesn't seem to be the case in most environments Ive ever worked in. People seem to want nothing than to hurt each other and spy on them?

So whats the deal. Given that everyone has heard the many horror stories about information getting into the wrong hands, and how easily we are spotted on the net, by posting so much of our lives on the net are we asking to be spied on? Are we asking to have our personal lives violated? By posting things like our activities on facebook are we asking to get our lives questioned?

While I don't know how things will play out at work I do know that this has definitely made me rethink my  opinions on how I will express myself in the future. I may not be the number one employee but I certainly like getting paid a heck of a lot more than working minimum wage!