Big Brother Isn't Reading

Yesterday, Jay from Head Office came to my branch to do an observation of my teaching. I can't tell whether it went well in his opinion. He sat in on two of my classes--the first, my rambunctious 10-year-old and 12-year-old in CEI10, the other being the adult pre-intermediate class in which I did the pineapple v. papaya exercise.

Jay and I also talked about other issues (more on those later, when the dust settles around them) and I got a chance to find out whether Head Office is, in fact, concerned about my blog. His answer was a definitive no; in his words, "we have better things to do" than read teachers' blogs to their families and friends back home.

I guess this is just one more thing about which Ruby and Eve have acted unprofessionally. Big Brother was never reading my blog; they just wanted me to think it was. I made the point to Jay that everything I've said so far about Eve, Ruby, and the branch could just as easily have been said on Dave's ESL Cafe or one of the zillion other websites for EFL/ESL teachers, where it would have done immensely more damage.

Naturally, I am relieved and glad to know that Head Office, at least, is more professional and respects the privacy of my communications with friends and family in the States.

I've had a chance to look into the subject of employees' blogging about the workplace, and what I've found is mixed. Three years ago, a flight attendant for Delta was fired by Delta not for anything she said about the company, which she scrupulously referred to as "Anonymous International Airlines" (though well-seasoned travellers might have gleaned from descriptions of flight routes that it was Delta), but for posting cheesecake-style photos of herself in her Delta uniform on the site.

I took a look at these photos, and I honestly can't tell what Delta was so hot and bothered about (pun intended). The uniform was not identifiable as a Delta uniform; it looked like kind of a generic black stewardess get-up, and the photos, while sexy, were not sleazy. But as one article I read about it said, the airlines have "gotten religion" about their old habits of promoting the image of stewardess-as-sex-kitten, and this is just one manifestation of that.

Admittedly, this was not a blog just for family and friends. While the author had started it as a kind of personal therapy, by the time Delta took action, the blog had a readership of 500,000 people--more than most newspapers in the United States. Maybe that says something about America; more people read the thoughts of a self-proclaimed "Queen of the Sky" than read their hometown paper. But I digress.

Some guidelines on the Internet recommend trying to make your workplace's identity anonymous in a blog; others do not, contending that the guise gets seen through sooner or later. I tend to take the latter view, particularly if an employee works at a large, well-known company.

Should employees be fired for comments about their employees on their blogs? I suppose, in extreme cases, yes. But I've become more aware of how unbalanced the power relations between employee and employer often is, and I don't think employers should have the right to prevent disclosure of uncomfortable facts or, in particular, of unprofessional behavior. It's very simple: if you don't want the world to think you're unprofessional, don't behave unprofessionally.