Tag Archives: facebook
Pen’s Mightier Than The Prod
Staff at PC World and Currys are bracing for a reprimand. The story has made the headlines and heads may roll. Their crime? They’ve moaned about customers to each other. Nothing unusual, really, but the difference is, they’ve taken part in what is the Facebook age’s version of moaning about annoying customers to each other. Customers were branded ‘stupid’ on the wall of an unofficial Dixon’s employees’ Facebook group, and there was suggestion from one user of using a cattle prod to, erm, help sales along a bit. Doubtlessly most electrical store patrons could see the funny side of such comments. I mean, all jobs have their annoyances, right?
Chances are, there are hundreds of ‘I worked at X company’ Facebook groups, with equally scathing suggestions for professional conduct. Problem is, journalists now have an easy story without having to leave the desk. They can do something that was unimaginable in years gone by, but can now be conducted in the time it takes to grab a coffee. Why not spend a few seconds hunting down an unofficial Facebook group of a large employer (customer service industry preferably – much more of a reputation to crush) and see what the employees have written to each other, and then turn it into a scandal? Easy. And suddenly, those few words that were meant as private, humorous, morale-boosting jokes between employees threaten the reputation of a retail electrical giant that has taken years to build.
What said employees carelessly overlooked is that while words exchanged in a confidential, extracurricular bitch about the bores of employment are fleeting, the written word holds far more credence.
Online communication often surpasses our face to face interaction and, while most of us think nothing of sharing juicy snippets, gossip and intimate detail in the form of an instant message, not all of us realise that the difference is, once something’s written, it stays. All those private, hilarious jokes are suddenly laid bare for all to see. And you can never be sure who’s watching.
