Face up to it

SOCIAL NETWORK: It’s not the first time, and it probably won’t be the last. Waitress Ashley Johnson of Charlotte, North Carolina, has been fired for making negative comments about customers on the social networking site Facebook.

Johnson, who worked for the southern pizza restaurant chain Brixx, made the comment after a couple spent three hours in the restaurant, which meant she had to work an hour longer than usual. The customers then left her a tip of $5, which she felt was too low. “Thanks for eating at Brixx, you cheap piece of ---- camper,” she wrote on her Facebook page.

A few days later, the 22-year-old was out of a job. The restaurant’s managers said she had violated company policy by saying something negative about a customer, and by placing her comments on a social network. “We definitely care what people say about our customers,” Jeff Van Dyke, a partner in the business, told the Charlotte Observer.

"We care what people say about customers." Jeff Van Dyke

Although Johnson apologized, it didn’t get her the job back. “It was my own fault,” she says. “I did write the message. But I had no idea that something that, to me, is very small, could result in my losing my job.”

There’s even a term for what happened to Johnson: she has been “dooced”, which means she has lost her job because of something she posted on a website. The term is named for popular blogger Heather Armstrong, who was fired because she wrote about her then employers on her website, dooce.com.

Minnesota employment lawyer Megan Ruwe says people need to realize that comments made on social networks can have far-reaching effects. “That’s not very different than an employee standing on a corner and holding a sign or screaming,” Ruwe points out. “It’s public, and it’s out there for the world to see. Individuals can forget that it is a very public forum.”