Articles Posted in Social Media and the Workplace

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@MaidenSarah2 on Twitter

Often on this blog, I write about employees who lose their jobs for doing dumb stuff on social media — like the one-time Associate General Counsel and HR Director who live-streamed himself on Instagram from the Capitol riots. I’ve got slide decks full of this stuff from HR conferences I’ve presented over the years.

So, when I read that an employee of a grooming products company in England tweeted that a customer was a ‘t**t’ and a ‘f*****g w****r,’ my first impulse is to insert another PowerPoint slide.

Boy, was I wrong! Continue reading

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Image Credit: @SollenbergerRC on Twitter

Remember that time in 2017 when a white nationalist march in Charlottesville turned deadly? Several participants ended up losing their jobs once exposed on social media.

Fast forward. Following Wednesday’s violent Capitol riots, a staff writer at Salon tweeted that the one-time Associate General Counsel and HR Director of a publicly-traded Texas-based insurance company, who apparently posted a video of himself on Instagram from outside the Capitol, no longer works there.

Continue reading

Pretty much none of you who emailed me after yesterday’s post about state-mandated vaccines were too keen on that idea.

But, speaking of COVID-19 and safety precautions, let’s see what you think about today’s twist. Continue reading

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Image Credit: https://www.publicdomainpictures.net License: CC0 Public Domain

I’ve said many times before on this blog that employees always have the right to freedom of speech — even on social media. But, words have consequences. And no law guarantees the right to continued employment.

But, there are limited exceptions to that rule. I’ll address one of them with you today. Continue reading

Anti-discrimination law focuses on the impact that bad acts have on victims, not on whether the actor intended the consequences of his actions. That’s why many employment lawyers caution employer-clients against second chances for employees that do things that others perceive as discriminatory.

Just ask Nick Cannon. Continue reading

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Image by Thomas Ulrich from Pixabay

Both a Harvard graduate and a police detective who supported the recent Black Lives Matter protests appear to be finding out the hard way that posting violent threats on social media, even if in jest, can end up costing a job. Continue reading

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Image credit: J_avant81 on Instagram

NBC10 Philadelphia reports here that a corrections officer in  New Jersey mocked George Floyd’s death as protesters marched past. Jason Avant, a former wide receiver for the Philadelphia Eagles, shared a video of it on Instagram (NSFW). Continue reading

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