Secretaries Sacked After Flamewar at Work

ross.w writes "Two legal secretaries in Sydney have been sacked after a flamewar over a ham sandwich got circulated throughout the cities financial district. The insults about figures, boyfriends and jobs flew thick and fast and ultimately resulted in the dismissal of both of them for mis-use of the email system."

Comments

Foward your email

[Neil Blender]

I have all my email forwarded to a gmail account. If I get something personal that I wouldn't want anyone to know about or something sketchy at work, I reply from gmail.

Re:Foward your email

[tonejava]

Wouldn't that breach company privacy/non-disclosure agreements somehow?

Lack of social skills

[Neo-Rio-101]

I used to work with two Japanese coworkers who had an email spat. They sat next to each other, but one day they had a heated debate. After that finished, they stopped all verbal communication and started sending nasty emails to each other... despite sitting only a meter apart.

Re:Lack of social skills

[techno-vampire]

Once, before the Internet was common, I was doing tech support for a small startup. The founder had given me permission to have, and examine the source code as needed. One day, while the chief programmer was chewing me out over the phone for doing exactly that, I was composing a fax to my boss telling him exactly what was going on. The programmer, who knew nothing except brute force and ignorance, was not amused, but shut up after the boss reamed him out for it.

Re:You can get sacked for that?

[onosendai]

Given the current moves to change the IR(Industrial Relations) laws in Australia, this will probably be the case here too soon. Currently, employees are protected under a scheme of unfair dismal legislation, which, should the changes pass, will be removed.

Can't wait for..

[Tracer_Bullet82]

the ensuing " Two Linux Engineers were fired for having a public kde-gnome e-mail flamewar"..

I still wonder why it has never happens over the years?

Lost opportunity

[macemoneta]

The company could have used this as a viral marketing tool to their advantage - or sold it to some entertainment company (new reality show, with an email component?). It clearly caught the interest and attention of many people.

Re:Ouch

[the_wesman]

yes, personal e-mail should be used for personal business but.... I have to ask - does this stray the line? according to the rule we've both agreed on (personal e-mail/personal business) and the assumption that her lunch is considered personal business (despite the fact that she is allow to keep it in her "official company refrigerator" - as opposed to the "personal refrigerator" for her "personal lunch") she _should_ have... found out the "personal" e-mail address of all of the 'colleagues' to whom she wanted to address and then used her personal e-mail account to ask them if they had seen the "personal" lunch that was taken from her "official company refrigerator" ....

seriously, if some unclefucker stole my damn lunch from a refrigerator where I work, I would somehow (possibly using a strongly-worded flyer that I would have designed on my "official work" computer and, of course, used the "official company" printer to print rather than via my "official company e-mail" account) try to figure out what had happened to my lunch - is this "personal" business? yes, but the fact is, her lunch went missing in her office (perhaps she did put it on another floor, but still) so approaching her colleagues via "company" e-mail does not seem unreasonable to me

the way this escalated is immature but that's what you can expect from stupid bimbo secretaries (I am kidding)

FULL TRANSCRIPT PROPERLY FORMATTED

[cvodebasher]

http://members.iinet.net.au/~codebasher/rofl.htm

Re:Ouch

[child_of_mercy]

Allens are a big 5 law firm in Australia, they are so far up themselves they can see their own tonsils (and I used to work for a different big fiver).

Having said that this won't stand up a minute in an industrial court unless there is a long and documented history of abuse and counselling.

So they'll either get a huge payout or be back real soon.

Everyone's a winner except the precious partners of the firm and they won't notice the spare change.

Re:guns illegal in Australia

[fbjon]

In that case there's a problem with the gun culture. I think strict gun laws can help change the culture in the long run. It's impractical in the short run, but that doesn't necessarily make the law bad.

Re:Gun Related Deaths per 100,000 People

[Jamu]

Here are the murder statistics from 2000.

United States 4 per 100000 people
Australia 1 per 100000 people
United Kingdom 1 per 100000 people
Japan 0 per 100000 people

It's interesting to compare them with the gun-related deaths above.

United States 14 (per 100000 people)
Australia 3 (per 100000 people)
United Kingdom 0 per 100000 people
Japan 0 per 100000 people

Murder statistics are similar in the UK and Australia but Australia has many more gun-related deaths.

As a manger...

[argStyopa]

As usual, there is probably a LOT more to the story.

As a manager, such a tepid 'flamewar' hardly rates my attention, much less the actual FIRING of two full time employees. Please. People have personalities, and they won't always be a wonderful happy always-loving bonded group of soulmates. Sometimes they'll fight, sometimes they'll fight over really, really STUPID things.

But to fire them?

I'd have them both in my office, show them the now-public email, and discuss with them the appropriate use of email and work time. Maybe I'd make a little issue over the embarrassment to the company of the public email. It probably wouldn't hurt to remind them that company emails are monitored, and theirs in particular would be up for scrutiny.

I'd also make a departmental or, (if I was high enough in the management) companywide point about the forwarding of obviously personal emails of others. I agree with the posters here that the schmuck that forwarded it 'out' is also a bit culpable.

But FIRING them? That's overreacting entirely, IMO.

Re:Oh, the horror of Outlook Express

[robertjw]

Only because the average user has been *trained* by bad messaging habits to read email that way.

Actually, I don't believe the people I am referring to were 'trained' at all. My experience has been in my personal correspondance with friends and family - most of their experience with computers is limited to browsing the web and using Yahoo mail, not sure we can blame Microsoft.

Top-posting is fine (it annoys me, but its tolerable) if you are engaged in a single-threaded, IM-style conversation where you only have to answer one question at a time

Your point is well taken, but the most appropriate method of communication should be used in any given situation. I find it somewhat interesting that the Usenet-style posting is the approved standard by the technical community. I can't think of any other communication method that historically used a similar style. If I wrtie a letter by snail-mail I don't include the contents of the previous letter at all. If I communicate by telephone I don't formally repeat the other person's words.