Whether it’s badmouthing a company that just offered you a paid internship, or lying about a family emergency on Halloween only to have your bosses discover a time-stamped photo of your dressed like a fairy and holding a beer, posts on social media – both on your own account and on others – have come back to haunt many employees.
For HR professionals, social media has presented a complex challenge: drawing an appropriate line between an employee’s first amendment rights and the company’s monitoring of it employees to protect its image.
The recent incident involving Anthony Cumia – AKA Anthony of the long-running “Opie & Anthony” shock-jock radio show on SiriusXM – exemplified this dilemma. Out for an evening stroll and some photo-taking in Times Square last month, Cumia claims he was assaulted by a woman who stepped into the frame of this photograph.
The woman apparently felt she was being photographed on purposed. An altercation ensued. Cumia claims she punched him in the face, multiple times and that a crowd of men, who also threatened him, gathered around. Cumia has a license to carry a concealed gun and had it with him at the time but did not use it. Neither aggrieved party called the police for assistance.
Cumia proceeded to post the woman’s photo on Twitter along with a series of hate-filled, racist, misogynistic, mostly unprintable rants, which went viral. The next day, he was summarily fired (via e-mail, no less) for behavior his employers found offensive and “…wholly inconsistent with what SiriusXM represents,” reports The Wire.
Business as Usual
From Cumia’s point of view, he did nothing wrong and was merely exercising his right to express free speech – moreover, that his Twitter posts were personal, not broadcast as part of his show, and didn’t involve anything illegal or any trouble with authorities.
Avid listeners of Cumia and his long-time radio partner Opie (AKA Gregg Hughes) know the pair are no strangers to controversy. They’ve been kicked off the air more than once for broadcasting off-color, “politically incorrect” or racially tinged bits that offended listeners and/or their bosses.
In the wake of this latest incident, more than 9,000 angry fans of the pair signed a petition demanding that Sirius reinstate him; it doesn’t appear likely, and Cumia has no plans to apologize to anyone for his behavior, reports Rolling Stone.
Social Media Faux Pas
This incident begs the question of what are appropriate boundaries for social-media access by HR personnel and job recruiters: Is anything posted on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn or other outlets off limits to us?
By at least one account, more than three-quarters of recruiters access search engines for background info on prospective employment candidates, with nearly two-thirds checking social-media sites as well. There are no hard-and-fast answers to these issues as we struggle to keep up with technological advances that impact our jobs and our workplaces on a daily – if not hourly – basis.
That said, it’s important to maintain a sense of humor about it all, especially in August when things at the office tend to slow down for many of us in the weeks leading up to Labor Day.
Here, then, is a list of social media taboos for employees or prospective hires. While they may seem like no-brainers, most are real-life examples taken from the archives of Facebook and Twitter, and all are amusing if a bit cringe-worthy. Feel free to share them with your staffers, and enjoy!
Happy waning days of summer.