Anyone with any common sense knows you can lose your job by posting party photos of yourself on Facebook. But there are some lesser-known acts — also unrelated to job performance — that can get you canned. Read on to discover other types of seemingly innocent behavior that can morph into firing offenses.
You can be fired for publishing a group photo: The National Labor Relations Board recently ruled that employees can’t be terminated for publishing certain social media posts about their jobs, provided the posts cover working conditions. However, the ruling does not cover tweeting or Facebooking other — often innocuous — details about your company, and other civil laws can still land you in the hot seat.
For example, an employee can get in trouble if he or she is at a company picnic with co-workers, clients and customers, and whips out an iPhone to snap a group photo. The employee later posts the photo on Facebook with a nice caption about the customers.
As innocent as this seems, it could result in the would-be Annie Leibovitz getting fired, says Pedram Tabibi, an attorney at Meltzer, Lippe, Goldstein & Breitstone on Long Island, which specializes in social media and business law.
“Under New York civil rights law . . . you can’t a use person’s name, picture, portrait or voice in commercial advertising without their consent,” says Tabibi.
“Arguably those customers could have a claim — you used their image for commercial purposes without their consent,” he adds.
You can be fired for tweeting something nice about your company: Gene Morphis, once the CFO of fashion retailer Francesca Holdings Corp., was active on Twitter, often posting good news tweets such as “Board meeting. Good numbers=Happy Board.”
The company fired him in May, citing failure to comply with company policies.
Posting sensitive information — even if done in a flattering or unwitting manner — could result in termination: “You just sent out information the company wasn’t ready to release to the public,” says Tabibi.
If this happened today, would the recent NLRB ruling have protected Morphis? Not likely.
“The types of comments he made, more geared towards his own well-being, are really not ‘concerted,’ because he is not necessarily discussing conditions that affect other employees,” Tabibi says.
You can be fired for having a (side) job: Given the sluggish economy, companies everywhere are asking employees to work more while paying them less — so many workers are burning the candle at both ends, taking second jobs or freelance work which could, in turn, waltz them out of their primary position.
These workers are getting canned for two reasons, according to David Lewis, CEO of OperationsInc, a human resources outsourcing and consulting firm in Norwalk, Conn.
“The first thing we’ve seen is companies who have said, ‘Your performance is lacking. You’re showing up late. You’re leaving early, and we view this other job as a conflict,” he says.
Also, many workers get second jobs in the same field as their primary jobs — which can create a conflict of interest.
Lewis recalls the firing of an NYC digital-media employee who consistently refused to work past 5 p.m. When the employer found out he had a night job — also at a Web design company — he was fired the following week.