Pete Nattress Cheesy Bits img src/uploads/sccheesegif
Registered 23/09/2002
Points 4811
9th January, 2005 at 16:14:00 -
Gather round, kids, and let me tell you a tale. It starts with me publishing a couple of articles on my site about how I hate my employer, Morrisons Supermarkets, and the customers I have to serve. All written in my extremist but never-failing sarcastic tone, with expletives aplenty. Everyone loves my articles. No one actually thinks I want to arson the shop, or kill the customers. Or maybe not... fastforward to THIS MORNING.
I'm called into the HR office and told I'm "under investigation" and entitled to a "representitive" if I want one.
"Why?" I exclaim.
"There has been a website brought to our attention."
"Oh..."
Out comes a nice fat copy of my website - more specifically, the pages relating to Morrison's and my wanting to "kill all the customers". At this point, the previously smart ideas I'd had of putting my own name on the site, naming Morrisons and naming the shop at which I work are starting to look not very smart at all. I am, in a word, screwed.
Now this much was obvious: I'd violated my contract/terms of employment by slandering Morrisons. But they weren't just annoyed about that. No no, I'd commited crimes far more heinous. They took my saying "I'd like to burn the shop down with a busload of pensioners inside" rather more literally than any normal person would have. In fact, the whole business was being approached as if I were an arsonist, on the edge, waiting to strike - not some geek publishing satirical articles on his website. Now obviously no PERSON could be stupid enough to take me seriously, but it seems Morrisons' policy is "fuck sarcasm, if you say it, you mean it".
So I got the cavalry treatment - in comes the "regional security manager". Now admittedly they were all being good natured about this and knew I didn't actually mean it, but the fact that Morrisons would bother wasting 2 hours of 4 employee's time, plus more looking at the website initially, boggles the mind, espescially when it's so obviously satirical. And I still have to sit through an interrogation and explain how the site came about, what was the point of the "rants" section and all that. I was as apologetic (and malleable) as I considered my job worth and conceded into taking down the stuff that mentions Morrisons and posting an apology, much though it pains me to impede my own freedom of speech. I left the room without a caution or anything but still with the inevitable feeling that I had been royally screwed over by procedings. Shit happens eh?
oh crap man. one thing you have to ask yourself is how the hell did they find it?
i speak from experience. i made a website once mocking my old high school. had some nice pictures too of a bomb going off on the third floor. which wasnt done by me! buy guess what, I got in trouble. fools. but my site also gave out teachers passwords for the computers, and the admin password too. incidently it was 'oracle'
anywho turned out some dick handed print outs to the IT technician.
AND THEN some goth guy who for some reason looked up to me did the same thing only he drew pictures of school mates with axes through heads n stuff! hah. had to appologise to the whole school!
but yea... unlucky Pete. i suppose it adds character
Pete Nattress Cheesy Bits img src/uploads/sccheesegif
Registered 23/09/2002
Points 4811
9th January, 2005 at 16:35:39 -
Jon: Well they never got the sarcasm before so it would be selective stupidity to have a go at me now!
Jay: Guess we've both learnt the lesson then... and CHRIST KNOWS how the found it. I have an hitlog of people arriving through a google search for "morrisons""ken morrison""tightfisted" (words in the article) but who the hell would search for that arbitarily?
Pete Nattress Cheesy Bits img src/uploads/sccheesegif
Registered 23/09/2002
Points 4811
9th January, 2005 at 16:54:08 -
one person but he wouldn't stitch me up - maybe he told someone who told someone. although i didn't think i'd done anything to warrant a stitch-up on this scale :/
So maybe there were some PR people doing searches for public opinion, they found your site, noted the name and sent it to the HR division to find out if the psychotic arsonist worked for them.
There is no patriot act in the UK, their equivalent is the Civil Contingencies Bill.
Pete, I admit I haven't stayed current with free speech laws in the UK, but don't you have a right to put whatever you want on your website as long as it doesn't violate their rights? I'm pretty sure they wouldn't be able to fire you or harass you if you kept it up.
Anyway I think they have no right to govern what you do outside of work.
Steve Zissou: Anne-Marie, do all the interns get Glocks?
I'm pretty sure they're both libellous. Also, like I said, terms of employment forbid me from "publishing inappropriate material related to the company" or something like that. That IS a restriction on my free speech but hey, what am I going to do? I signed up for it didn't I.
Oh dear. You were lucky to get away with it, though.
Something similar happened to me - I had posted a message on the Uni messageboard ages ago making a comment about the head of Computer Science and how incomphrehensible his lectures were (and, sadly for me, also commenting about his beard... all right, I said he looked like Treebeard.) Guess who found that long after I'd forgotten about it...
Happily, he accepted my grovelling apology and my grades are safe once again.
Damn, man. What a stroke of bad luck, with a dash of facism.
So much for free speech indeed. I bet that they had "I also forfiet my soul" in fine print somewhere on your contract. People are allowed to satirically slander the president of their country, the queen, their government, the ecomony, and they're allowed to have conspiracy theories about landing on the fucking moon, but God forbid you should slander your employer and customers of your work place. Tough luck dude.
[EDIT] Doesn't your disclaimer cover you in some way?
A friend of mine published "The Employee Handbook 2.0" on his LiveJournal for the place where we work. Named locations, people, etc. by name, and poked fun at our managers and policies. About 3 days later sections of it were printed off and placed in the break-room and box office with a note that said anyone who knew who wrote it should talk to the G.M. Needless to say, he deleted it as soon as possible, and being a popular guy, nobody turned him in. Still, it's put all of us on edge about our web-journals, knowing that corporate actually has enough time to read them.
XBL Gamertag: Rampant Mjolnir
Pete Nattress Cheesy Bits img src/uploads/sccheesegif
Registered 23/09/2002
Points 4811
10th January, 2005 at 05:55:56 -
Rick: nope, Morrisons didn't seem to care that it was sarcasm and that was stated in my disclaimer, they just wanted to nail my arse - further proof that they're idiots.
Morrisons is not olde english, it pretends to be (well thats my thoughts even if it has been around for donkeys years). If it was it might be good, not the crock of preverbial it is.
The day before christmas eve, i went there, and people was fighting outside in the car park and inside. I only wanted a pc gamer .
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