Facebook Nearly Caused Me To Lose My Job

[Anonymous]

I wanted to share this story with you so you can be aware of something I had never even thought about.

I comment a lot on things on Facebook, as I'm a pretty opinionated person, and I have done for years. One day, I commented on a video and I stated my opinion, though I wouldn't say it was offensive. In short, I stated that it was cruel to keep a deformed animal alive (it was extremely deformed; one eye, no eye lids, no nose) and wondered why a certain group of people often worshipped these animals. That was it. I didn't think much of it and carried on with my day.

A woman commented on it, showing her displeasure which is no surprise; you can't comment anything online without someone being offended. This woman appeared to be an unemployed, PC feminist, an LGBT activist and probably a vegan to add. She said that all lives matter etc and she remarked that someone with my views shouldn't be doing the job that I am as, somehow, that affects my ability to work? People have often remarked on my profile, trying to use it as a weapon against me in the past. I didn't pay much attention to her comment though.

I believe it was the next day that I got a call from my boss. I kind of knew what it would be about. She told me a lady had messaged her through our company Facebook page and sent screenshots of my comment and told my boss that I shouldn't be working in that job!

Thankfully, my boss saw that the woman was trying to be vindictive and laughed that the woman needed to get a life. She also entirely agreed with my opinion and she knows I've worked with animals in the past and I care about them. I told her that I've definitely learned from the experience and that I will removing my place of work from my profile!

I really don't know what this woman expected, other than getting me sacked. Legally, my boss couldn't have sacked me for something unrelated to work and because of my opinion. You have to go through a disciplinary procedure anyway.

I never expected an offended, disgruntled person would actually go out of their way to get me sacked! It really opened my eyes to the lengths some people will go to, so if you're someone that has your place of work public on your profile and you comment on a lot of things, I'd recommend hiding your place of work and being aware that there are some very sad people out there who will happily try to destroy a stranger's life if they take offence to them.

[Wonderer89]

What a nut job 🙄 some people seriously can’t take an opinion and leave it at that. At least your boss was realistic about the situation though, and nothing came of it.

I did something stupid with social media a few years ago, I had my employer set to the company and my profile on public. I’d been offered a better contract under an individual agreement instead of the standard company one, so was going from being paid two weekly to monthly and they stuffed up my pay. The week before my wedding I hadn’t been paid anything for almost two months and I frustratingly put up a status about how it shouldn’t be this hard to get paid. Didn’t name them or anything and it wasn’t derogatory or untrue, but I got a call from HR the next day as their search algorithm had picked it up. I almost lost my job because “how would it look to shareholders if they saw that we aren’t paying our employees” 😐

[myTake Owner]

Wow, that's tough! I didn't think they had social media algorithms as well. :O Most of my profile is only visible to friends, but even my family can't see my posts and I always think twice before I make something visible to the public.
It really up your eyes though!

[Wonderer89]

I don’t know if many employers do it, I only found out due to this instance but we have a huge social media presence so it kind of makes sense.
Haha straight away I removed everything related to my job and made everything private. I keep LinkedIn for networking but that’s the only place.
Never know whose watching I guess 😊

[burpzzzzz]

Well you should had a lawyer look up the contract.
Also the company didn't pay you on time because it would make it appear the company is having a larger profit when it's not. If they do it to enough people the stock price can go up.
Apple does it different way but getting a bank loan at very low interest rate. They have a large sum of money cash on hand which makes it appears for the company is doing much better which increases the price of stock.

[Wonderer89]

@burpzzzzz the company didn’t pay me on time due to lazy staff, not a drive in profits. It wasn’t on a large enough scale to have any affect on cash flow, it was one persons salary. While I understand this is how some business’ are run, this wasn’t one of them

[burpzzzzz]

Lazy staff? How hard is it? it's all computerized these days so it's a lot easier before people started using computers.

[Wonderer89]

@burpzzzzz it shouldn’t have been hard, that was the issue. The ball was dropped several times by the same two people and I lost out but human error happens

[meowcow]

The interwebz is the home to all the trolls on this planet.
These are people who have achieved nothing in life, and so their only means to have a voice is through the internet.

Mingle with the stupids, and you yourself are stupid. Always hide your identity, mask your IP, and post as little personal information as possible. Never post your current job on Linkedin. Never post photos from a smartphone unless you know how to delete the hidden metadata that identifies your location (people can find your house address simply by looking at the photo's code). Never use your real name on social media accounts.

[Anonymous]

You are going to blame it on pc culture. I wonder what I can blame my experience on? My company was being spammed with emails from certain organizations because I ratted on them for cheating people with their online services. The services was a complete and total sham. I posted the information about the fraud on google and facebook. I detailed the entire scam and showed multiple instances of how they totally lied. I even created a victims group in social media for people who used their service.

The victims were mostly older politically conservative males but I would say about 40% were men under 50. These organizations were online dating sites. They would post photos of pretty women and claim that these women were looking to date. They would charge men thousands of dollars. Conservative guys would fall for it because the services would claim these women were traditional anti-feminist and from different cultures where men were kings. Meanwhile, most of these old guys going to the site, did not realize they were talking to men and most of the women in the photos were already married. The services charged fees for writing letters to the women in the photos. But they had hired staff who would respond on behalf of the women. So these old guys never knew they were being lied to.

And you guessed it. They contacted my company. Spammed management with email and tried to get me fired for telling the absolute truth.

The thing was it could be a totally thankless job. I would try to help these guys but contacting them would take me to their facebook pages or twitter, which was full of nonsense political drivel. But I felt I should help them anyway. No one deserves to be lied to like that. Many of them I couldn't help. . . they were just too far gone. Not all of them were dealing with the full deck of cards, if you know what I mean.

[Anonymous]

People are so crazy. It's like these people are so upset and jealous that they can't get ahead in life that they resort to attacking those that have done so themselves. Sad individuals.

If they refocused their energy into improving their own lives instead of whining and crying about life being unfair and making it political and protesting all of this nonsense, maybe they'd make something of themselves. You know they're just trying to influence the political system into giving them free money and stuff so they can continue not having a life. Cowardly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipzPZFdznlE

But then they make it about everyone and "everyone matters" and fight for social justice (!) so that they look good and can feel better about themselves.

It's not that people don't want everyone to be equal or to succeed or anything either, people just want them to do it the RIGHT WAY... A. K. A. they should get off their butts and do something! Just like any other successful person has had to do!

[MarkRet]

I never use Facebook (I don't understand it, and don't really care anyway), but I used to be a civilian working on a military base, and we had a co-worker who was always on Facebook (don't know if she was actually doing this AT work), and was putting information out there about the functions on the base, certain co-workers she didn't like, etc. The management found out about this, and she ended up getting suspended for a while. She's lucky she didn't get fired, because a civilian or military person putting that kind of thing out on Facebook is a security violation, which we were ALWAYS getting memos and training about.

[myTake Owner]

Some people are stupid. She likely knew she was breaking the rules as well.

[BrittBratt2416]

Wow that is absolutely low down for someone to do that! How butt hurt and petty can you be to email someone's job just cause they didn't like an opinion. I honestly just went through that with a crazy girl on here trying to paint as a evil person just cause I didn't share the same opinion/beliefs as her. But to get someone fired over it is just pure evil and entitlement. I get you have to be careful with certain things posted on the internet, like threats but something that small was blown way out of proportion. Honestly, that lady needs to be careful her dang self, she made it very well know it was her that contacted your company in order to try to get you fired. If it was someone who was really struggling and needed their job WAS fired, they would know exactly who it was and might attempt to hunt her ass down just so she knows what it feels like to be targeted for no reason. Seriously, if she keeps it up it just might happen, people are going through hard times and will snap.

[myTake Owner]

I hope someone does snap on her and she gets her comeuppance.

[Djaaay]

I have a story for you. Same thing happened to me. A feminist woman from New York complained about something i posted once. She realized I was a (CEO) of a company. She found the owner of the company and complained profuciously. little did she know , I was also the owner. So i played it off just listening to her rant. I then invited her for an interview to acknowledge her complaint and find disposition towards the grievance therefore at my expense. When she arrived finally at the airport , I suggested an audio/video grievance to impliment the sanction better , she agreed. With her hand print on the cup , the print was identified and I found out her complete story. The audio/video was sent to her employer where she was fired on the spot by other elected officials. She (was) a city clerk.

[myTake Owner]

Wow! Was she really rude and horrible in her complaint? What did you post?

[Djaaay]

Her demeanor was more or less agenda driven towards female superiority. As she figured I was in alliance with her , she spoke in a tone of protest against men having any right whatsoever to be opinionated towards female advancement in areas concerning the work force. What I posted was the irony of what feminism really is. I'm pretty sure she was politically motivated. What I found out shortly after was absolutly interesting. Her ex- husband was the guy I replyed my comment to.

[Other_Tommy_Wiseau]

I'm confused. If she knew you were the CEO, how did she not know you were the owner? Also, I'll admit, maybe I'm missing something (like a metaphor), but how did her finger print help you, exactly?

[Djaaay]

@Other_Tommy_Wiseau. She thought she was talking with the owner about the CEO. My in-law took the cup to be tested for latent prints.

[Anonymous]

I got into a similar debacle attending a pro trump rally with letter campaigns from Antifa groups writing to employers, relatives and even my girlfriend's job and parents accusing me of being a white supremacist. My girlfriend also had a hateful letter writing and signature campaign after some of her feminist college classmates found she likes a lot of pro-life stuff on facebook, apparently they didn't feel comfortable In an English language class with someone who believes that their abortions were murderer.
This is just the age we live in where people are easily offended and will do anything to make you pay for your views short of confronting you directly.

[myTake Owner]

Gosh, some people are genuinely ridiculous!

[HGG3805]

Surprise, huh? And that is one of the dangers of social media. Be careful what you post on line. And never assume words or pictures you post will not be seen by everyone.

I was in a job interview not long ago in CA. It was a round table discussion with a number of people interviewing me. To my surprise, the key person had done a search for info on me. She asked me about a lot of things she had found. I have been very careful about posting much of anything but it caught me by surprise when she went down the list.

[Silver158]

Once a manager at my work alleged that I was posting negative things about my workplace/job on facebook. I wasn't but he'd taken to hating me for some reason. And I replied with "What did I post? How did you see this?" He said he'd been on my page and read my posts. I replied with "we're not friends and my facebook is set to ultra private, you can't even send me a friend request. So, you couldn't have seen anything apart from my profile picture..." He backed down pretty quick.

In short though. watch both what you post (i wasn't posting anything) and who you annoy because they'll try to use anything they can possibly think of against you, even if it doesn't exist.

[ADFSDF1996]

Yes, unfortunately there are disgusting people who try to ruin people’s lives by trying to silence opposing views through fear. Currently it’s usually the SJWs who do this. I use to comment a lot on Facebook, I would be very vocal in criticizing the far left but recently I realized that Facebook has a very unnecessary feature where my comments appear on my friends newsfeed so I stopped commenting on posts.

[myTake Owner]

I wish they didn't show up on friend's news feeds.

[ADFSDF1996]

Me too.

[JesseEllyson]

My Facebook account is limited. By that I mean that I only have a few "friends" on Facebook. I'm not one of those people who adds as many people as possible as if it were a popularity contest. I started my Facebook account with only people I actually know. The people I have added since, those who I don't know personally, have all been people who's comments I had seen on a regular basis and either approved of or, at least, respected. Also, if they were people I was seeing regularly, that meant that they were friends of friends. There was at least some kind of connection. At this point, after half a decade of Facebooking, I still only have around forty "friends" on my list. I keep everything tight and close.

[AlphaGhost]

Its unfortunate and I think now will be best time to regulate the feminism and other Gender specific hate groups and if you want equality then these hate wouldn't exist in the first place and world population is increasing but number of jobs is not picking up pace with it cuz
People are lazy and they want to just earn enough for them rather than motivated beings ready to do something extraordinary like starting new business and I think the condition will continue to worsen until its out of control and utter disaster and I think Feminist need to calm down and think What they are really doing?

[Anonymous]

This is 21st century
This is the year 2017
This is the year of PC Warriors/Keyboard Warriors
This is the year of getting offended by everything
This is the year of not being able to say " HELLO " In fear of offending.

This is why since the day I have created my facebook account I have kept it fully on private to prevent these internet assholes to do any harm. And since I've faced a lot of racism due to my Islamic name I have changed it to something different and since then been peacefully participating in discussions on FB stuff.

[chrisbigman]

Yeah, some people are THAT crazy that they are willing to threaten your livelihood just because you don't agree with them or they don't agree with you. As of late, Donald Trump has been a prime example of that. That's evil lurking at every corner going to work. That's the great thing about freedom of speech - you should not be penalized for your opinion, regardless of how much someone doesn't agree with it.

[madhatters4]

this is one of the many reasons why i limit how much information people can view on my page.

the operative words are Social and Media and in those terms comes the caveat that there is very limited privacy and the reality that what you say can be very public

[Anonymous]

People should be careful about what they post on Facebook for quite a few other reasons too. Like you should never ever post your vacation photos on Facebook while you are still away, or at least you shouldn’t make it obvious that your home is empty. I actually know a person who got robbed because of it!
Another reason is that these days most employers will look you up on social media before they hire you. So an offensive comment from long time ago, a rude joke or a not entirely decent photo can cause you a job opportunity.

[WalterRadio]

I am an employer. I have not hired people because of their facebook pages.

I don't have a facebook page.

[Anonymous]

Yeah, putting where you work on your FB profile is pretty dumb.

Had this person email me on Craigslist because I found these kittens under a car. I posted that they needed a home.

This lady emailed me that what I was doing was illegal and will contact the police if I didn't take down the post.

[goddess87]

People don't understand that whatever you post online is for the world to see. It is becoming a common thing to lose your job over a post and an even more common thing in this day and age for freedom of speech to be less and less accepted. Everyone is offended over the tiniest things and it is those offended few that will form and create backlash against you. Unless you can handle the repercussion of any and everything you post, it's best to think about what you are saying before posting.

[katiesmuff]

I think it is even smarter not to be on social media at all. I believe it is the worlds curse! Everywhere you turn today, go today, etc everyone has their face stuck in front of a computer or an i pad or a smart phone.

[goddess87]

I agree. People can't even drive anymore because no one seems to be able to hang up and do it. It makes me ill when driving to look over and see someone not even watching the road, but staring down at their phone. It's much worse than DUI. Just ridiculous how people are so dependent on electronics

[Darknut123]

I couldn't agree more, they seriously need to find away to jam signals while a vehicle is on. I've even been behind some people s that sit through an entire green light texting. Its like they wanna look cool to whoever is looking and feel important

[TheFlak38]

Never keep your profile set on public.
Never add personal info such as your job.
Never add anyone from your company unless he/she is very close to you.

[myTake Owner]

My work has always been on my profile and never thought twice about it until this happened! It's hidden now and only my qualifications are shown so future employers can see them. :)
I only added one coworker who doesn't work there any more but she can't see my posts.

[Unit1]

I know of cases where (the misuse of) facebook has caused job losses.
Good, that you learned it. Now keep that in mind.
Better yet - cancel social media. It's cancerous anyway. But you do as you please.