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Social media is fun and all, but use it the wrong way and it can cost you your job.
I Tweet, Facebook, Instagram, etc. I recently gave up SnapChat, but other than that, I’d still say I’m addicted. It’s not good for you and I wish I could give it up cold turkey — but it has become too ingrained in my life. It is especially prevalent at work, where my employer has yet to block social media from our computers. (I’m not a child, but a little part of me wants to be treated like one sometimes.)
I was browsing Reddit earlier and came across an /r/AskReddit post about people who had lost their jobs because of social media. It was so good I couldn’t help but share the best ones.
There is no way to confirm whether these stories are legit or BS, so take each little anecdote with a tiny grain of salt.
Via Reddit:
Didn’t lose my job, but I watched a friend lose his over a tweet. He tweeted “So getting head while delivering pizzas is pretty sweet” one night while he was working. The next morning he tweeted “YO FUCK YOU PAPA JOHNS I don’t need you or your stupid job anyway” or something to that effect. I’ve never laughed so hard in my life
I worked customer support for a mobile game company. I was honest with a disheartened customer, who had complained that recent changes had made the game pay to win. It had, in truth, been a glitch with an update. I told them as much, assuring them the team would be fixing it in the next update. But then the games profits skyrocketed. The team kept the glitch, and put out a statement describing the change as an intentional one designed to improve the play experience. But there was my name, plastered all over the game forums, claiming the opposite. I technically worked for a separate company that provided support for several studios, but the studio behind this game was our biggest customer. They approached my bosses, furious I jeopardised their cash cow, and demanded I be fired. I promptly became familiar with the underside of the bus, as I was gone within the week.
tl;dr: worked customer support for mobile games, told truth, went viral(ish), fired.
Worked at gamestop until 2010. The store was in a mall and parents would always leave their kids in the store and go do their shopping..Sometimes the children would cry, sometimes they’d pee themselves, even had one #2. Parents would get mad at us for not bringing them to the bathroom(What the Sh*t?) or start screaming at their kids for not just playing games for a few hours without causing any problems. I tweeted about how the store wasn’t there to babysit children and never really thought about that tweet again.. until –
Few months later, same thing. Parent drops kid off in store, leaves. 20 minutes later, an older looking guy is outside the store, on his flip phone, aiming it at the store. He’s creeping me out but I continue offering pointless warranties to customers while waiting for my next break and then, I noticed him walk near the entrance of the store and ask that kid where his parents are. This seemed really fishy and the guy looked beyond suspicious, I was thinking he could be a pedophile and I was right. He gets the kid to go with him, I call up mall security so they could check it out and they caught him before he left the mall.
He was arrested, the kid was crying, asking for his mom.. Who mall security could not reach because as it turns out, she went to some stores outside of the mall area and she didn’t actually come back for another 2 hours, at which point she threatened to sue me, gamestop, the mall,etc. Security guard lady told her that child services were called, they all walked away(That was the last time I saw them.)
Few days later , District Manager(DM) shows up in store and I was fired on the spot because that lady made a complaint, DM found my twitter and informed me that my approach to yesterday’s dilemma & my tweet about how Gamestop isn’t a babysitting service has made them believe that I don’t have the “Gamestop spirit”.
Both the manager and district manager told me I could use them as a reference on my resume though, which was great until they both lost their jobs a few weeks later.
A former colleague of mine posted about how he was going to use up all his sick leave then quit.
He posted it at 9am, he was told he had no more job at 11.
I was younger and an idiot. I posted something on facebook about wanting to go home and play the sims so I could create [telecommunications store I worked for] on it and then slowly kill off all the customers.
I was working a late night shift in a mall and forgot our new coworker had added me on facebook days before.
Not me, but the company I work for. A prospective employee just passed his interview, and was told that all he needs to do is pass a drug test and a physical and he would start on Monday. The company Facebook guy found the new hire on Facebook and the guy had just posted 20 minutes after the interview, “shit! Anyone know how to pass a drug test in 24 hours?!”
*edit: the guys job is not “Facebook guy”. He is the social media marketing and customer service guy. Promotes the business, talks with people and posts to social media websites.
I work in a hospital and there was a police shooting in my area a couple of years ago and multiple officers were brought into our ER. One officer was DOA and a number of idiot hospital employees posted condolences on their Facebook pages with the name of the officer before the family was officially informed. If memory serves 7 or 8 employees were rightfully fired for that one.
My female friend (18) was DM’d through twitter by the news presenter (37) of our city. He was talking about her beach pictures and how she is really pretty and how they need to get together. She ended up telling him that it’s pretty ridiculous that he’s trying to get with her. He lost his job later that week. The only real reason he lost his job was because he used the weather channels twitter account.
I had to fire an employee for a tweet he wrote about a customer. He tweeted “(customer’s full name) would be a great name for a gay porn star.”
I found out about it when the customer’s lawyer called me the next day threatening action. Turns out the guy worked for the local newspaper and obsessively searched his name on all social media.
I had to fire someone for one. He was a volunteer firefighter and left for a call which I allowed. Fifteen minutes later someone showed me his 5 minute old post of him riding quads saying something along the lines of “sometimes you just need to F off from work”. That put him on a final warning. He then left because he said HIS house was on fire then half an hour later his wife tagged him in a photo of him sitting in a kiddie pool in front of his house.
The funny thing is, in both cases, if he had simply asked to leave early I probably would have said yes.
Guy at my company got sacked for putting a Facebook status along the lines of “f-ng immigrants, I hate them” not realising both his bosses (also owners of the company) were 2nd generation immigrants from India. They started the company from scratch and now employ 30 people. They pay for full gym membership, healthcare, and generous pension for all the staff, which he had to say goodbye to when he was fired. How’s that for your “f-ing immigrants”?
Sometimes, it’s just better to log off.
To read more, check out the rest of the responses here..
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