Please delete

madison-nyc

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zzzLazyDaisy

I think your biggest faux pas was setting up the facebook page in the first place. You have only been there four months, that is not long enough to get a feel for the culture of the company.

A much more mature and sensible thing to do, would have been to contact your employer's HR department and explain that working from home with little direct contact with colleagues is isolating and makes it difficult to feel part of the 'team' and to suggest that the company itself set up a facebook page for employees, or a company intranet forum. This would of course mean that the exchanges would be monitored by the employer.

In this day and age of social media, I can understand why you didn't realise the pitfalls of what you were doing, but you should be learning lessons, and quickly, if you wish to redeem this situation. You need to accept that this is the employer's standpoint on fb - and is the standpoint of many employers. Many many people have lost their jobs over remarks made on fb about their colleagues and employers. It just is not worth the risk. Fb is a potential minefield for employers. The reason employers have strong views about fb is that at least some of them have lost lucrative contracts as a result of comments on fb, and/or have found themselves on the wrong end of discrimination claims and/or have had fb comments used against them in tribunals.

What you also need to understand is that, if you are employed after April of this year, in the first two years of employment you can be dismissed for any reason, or no reason at all (as long as the dismissal is not related to unlawful discrimination). This means that you need to keep your head down and your nose clean, and just get on with your job.

Your best bet, as someone else has said, is to go into the disciplinary and grovel. Make it clear that your intention was to keep the company safe from public eyes so people could chat and keep in touch and was wasn't intended in any way to be subversive or to undermine the company or its clients. That you just didn't think it through, and now you realise that it was a stupid mistake and you certainly wouldn't do that again, not in this job or any other job. Do not make the mistake of trying to explain to the employer why you are right and they are wrong, or that they don't understand fb, or anything even vaguely along those lines. Ask them to give you a second chance and hope you get a final written warning instead of dismissal.

HurdyGurdy

madison-nyc wrote: »

the group had only been set up for 4 days , two clients were mentioned , one by full name , a general question about them , work related and nothing negative. the other was referred to my first name and they were referred to as a joke , in a negative light.

the basis of the gross misconduct as listed on the letter i was given: setting up the facebook group and the way i spoke about clients.

i genuinely didn't see it as a breach of confidentiality as it was a private group with only fellow employees in it , i didn't see it , and still don't , as any different to sending a text.

As for disscussing clients in a negative manner , i think they'd be needing to sack 95% of the workforce if that is classed as gross misconduct.

I reffered to office staff as 'useless' in a thread i'd put on about my wages being wrong again , which they have been every payday since i started so it was factual.

There was hardly anything else on there , just happy halloween , who's working the weekend etc.

No - that is your *opinion* of the office staff, due to your experience of your wages. But that does make it factual.

miduck

madison-nyc wrote: »

the group had only been set up for 4 days , two clients were mentioned , one by full name , a general question about them , work related and nothing negative. the other was referred to my first name and they were referred to as a joke , in a negative light.

the basis of the gross misconduct as listed on the letter i was given: setting up the facebook group and the way i spoke about clients.

i genuinely didn't see it as a breach of confidentiality as it was a private group with only fellow employees in it , i didn't see it , and still don't , as any different to sending a text.

As for disscussing clients in a negative manner , i think they'd be needing to sack 95% of the workforce if that is classed as gross misconduct.

I reffered to office staff as 'useless' in a thread i'd put on about my wages being wrong again , which they have been every payday since i started so it was factual.

There was hardly anything else on there , just happy halloween , who's working the weekend etc.

You're screwed. You can see how fundamentally wrong this is, can't you?

zzzLazyDaisy

All this happened in just four days!

Imagine how much worse the damage might be (from the employer's point of view) if it had not been nipped in the bud!

YOUR opinions on whether this whole episode was damaging/acceptable are worth diddly squat. You need to put yourself in your employer's shoes and accept that, if you want to keep your job, their views trump yours.

madison-nyc

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miduck

madison-nyc wrote: »

oh I agree i'm sacked , I'm not holding any hope of keeping my job. It's a family run business , no HR just 4 family memebrs who run everything. Over 80 staff , all replaceable very easily in this climate. They're not going to put theirselves out or take the embarrasment of me showing them up , on the chin. It's a very impersonal comapany , we're very much numbers on sheets , rarely see or speak with the bosses.

I'm more concerned with getting a new job and my cv with a bloomin sacking on it!

Welcome to the real world!

Swipe

I think the best thing you can do is to try to negotiate a resignation out of the situation. If you use them as a reference all they need to do it to confirm the dates you started and finished worked there and offer no more information which is the policy of most HR depts anyway.

madison-nyc

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madison-nyc

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