How Not To Get Fired From Work For Blogging

How Not To Get Fired From Work For Blogging

I keep reading articles about people who get fired from work (like that person from Friendster) for blogging. I used to blog from work fairly often, but I guess it was different in my situation since our company had been bought out and we were forbidden to do any actual work. Most of the department was calling out their best Text Twist scores every few minutes, but I lost interest in the game after I started getting cross-eyed and regularly radenig wrdos ilek tihs.

Some tips for blogging at work:

1. Do not tell anyone at work about your blog. Not in passing, not in conversation at the water cooler, not during happy hour, not on their deathbed. Because what inevitably happens is, even though you've thought about the repercussions of management finding out about it, they haven't. So they start telling people about it, who start looking at you like you don't do any work. Which you don't but personal confirmation of that fact is not necessary. Or worse, they say "Oh can I read it?" At which point you either have to start censoring yourself, or in my case they find out you think they're the most annoying person in the history of ever.

2. Don't mention where you work on your blog. Unless of course, you're like my friend and work at Blogger. In which case blogging is probably not only accepted but possibly encouraged. I say possibly because even at Blogger, I'm sure they'd have an issue with you postponing imminent deadlines to write about your latest drunken bar brawl. I'm so paranoid I never say the name of my last company on here and I don't even work there anymore. Not to mention the fact that I don't plan to set foot in a corporate environment as an employee ever again. I plan to resort to selling Avon or Amway products first. Okay not really, I plan to write my damn book. By February. So Mike J can purchase every item on my Froogle list, with substitutions for the items no longer available.

3. Learn how to hit the "Alt" then "Tab" buttons in a fraction of a second (holding both simultaneously), from anywhere on the keyboard. This is also valuable if you regularly look at porn from your cubicle which is located in a high traffic area (idiot) or if you clicked on a seemingly innocuous link and ended up on a website dedicated to fisting Czech firemen.

4. Write your entry in an e-mail, that way you don't have an obviously non-work-related site up for half an hour. But don't accidentally send that e-mail to the entire company. Okay this is only semi-related but once some woman at the NBA sent an e-mail to the entire company talking smack about some other woman who called in sick when she was really at the beach. Made herself look like a moron AND an asshole because she probably got the other woman fired. You know what, too many people can probably fuck this one up. Write it in a Word document or in Notepad instead then cut and paste.

5. Don't write any incriminating work-related stuff on there. Then it's no longer a blog, it's also evidence. On some of the blogs I've read, people actually talk about how they deliberately overbill clients or steal company computer hardware. Um, duh. There's no purpose to that. It doesn't make you look cool, it makes you look like the thieving bastard you are, and I hope your HR department finds out about your blog one day.

6. Don't bookmark your blog on your computer. And clear your history often. It doesn't completely cover your tracks but you're at least making it a bit more difficult to catch you.

7. Don't blog from work. Unless you're like me, and getting laid (off) anyway because some crappy competitor from the middle of the country of all fucking places bought your company for the accounts. Okay I have nothing against the middle of the country. Just the venture capitalists who pass themselves off as farmers-in-sheepskin, but really plot to shrivel your bank account up in their greedy quest for more revenue.

I was only kidding about the last one. Blogging is like a cup of hot coffee on those especially tedious days. I can't think of anymore tips. Probably because I'm tired, but more likely because I've lost interest in the topic. Happy Blogging.