Hello all - I know it's been a long time - thanks for the not so subtle hint, Lauren! Things have been very busy around here and my work schedule has been a little hectic - but I have a few minutes, so I thought I'd drop a few thoughts.
My wife and I were talking the other night. She works hard, as do I, and every now and then we go out and blow off steam. In the course of blowing off steam, and in this day and age of cameras in everything from phones to iPods, invariably someone is going to want to take pictures - probably because they're too drunk to remember what's happening. Then, these pictures invariably end up posted on Facebook, or MySpace (does anyone use that anymore?) and someone will invariably "tag" these photos so that people know who's in them. One small problem there....
More and more businesses are checking social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace to "check up" on employees. When I was working at the brokerage firm 2 years ago - we had a girl call in sick, and then get in trouble because she made a posting to her MySpace page while she was home. While that was completely wrong - I mean, if I'm home sick, I have every right to use my computer - it's not like calling out and going to a baseball game - I have also heard of people getting fired because there are pics of them drinking and cutting loose. So Janel and I were talking about this, and she believes it should be common courtesy to ask someone if they want to be tagged in photos. I completely agree.
There are also instances of people posting on their Facebook pages that "My job sucks" or "My boss was a real a$$hole today." Brilliant move Einstein - did you forget that 2 months ago, you added your boss as a friend? Where my wife works, the HR director has a FB page, but doesn't add co-workers as friends - yet she still had ME as a friend. I was unaware of this, as was my wife, so I immediately removed her from my friends. I know of employers now that search these things BEFORE HIRING to see if the potential new employee has pictures of themselves chugging it up at a bar, half naked, in compromising positions. The sad thing is, and Facebook should work on this, if you're "tagged" in a photo, not only should you be able to untag yourself, but you should be able to delete the photo. If someone has a pic of me on their FB I don't want up there, to me, that is unauthorized use of my likeness.
The only other option is to break every camera you see......
So, my friends, sound off. What do you think? Let me know!
