Ready, Fire, Aim

A Vermont employer supports the troops and their families:

On Tuesday, Sarah, co-author of Roger's Blog, joined the growing ranks of people who have been fired from their jobs for blogging. This is still novel enough that it's a newsworthy event, but in this case it's doubly so, because Sarah's husband is a Vermont National Guard soldier  currently stationed in Iraq.  The blog that they co-author chronicles their experiences during Roger's deployment. Roger writes about life on the ground in Iraq, Sarah writes about what it's like without her husband on the homefront.

Last week, in a post I linked to here, Sarah wrote about how she asked her employer to chip in to help her send Roger's bike to him in Iraq, for his birthday. She writes that she thought her boss would say yes, since he'd supported similar things in the past. Instead, he hemmed and hawed, which upset her. So she blogged about it, without naming him, or the company she worked for; Sarah and Roger do not even give their last names on the blog.
...
In a phone conversation a couple hours ago, Sarah told me that when her boss fired her on Tuesday, he led her to believe that it was because of this blog post. She says the same in a post Tuesday titled You're Fired. She had just been promoted in May, and had worked for the company for 8 years. True, her account is pretty frank, and should probably have been self-censored. But if that's really why she was fired, did she deserve it? That seems harsh.

Yes, it's a bit dumb to blog about your employer¹, and while Sarah and Roger don't use their last names, it wouldn't take much work to figure out who they are and where Sarah works.  That said, firing her for a first violation of a non-existant policy is absolutely ludicrous and smacks of bad management and/or somebody looking for an excuse to let Sarah go.

Despite my initial quick judgement, I know I don't have all the facts and I'll be very curious to hear more details as the story unfolds in the Free Press (she spoke to Sam Hemingway over there).

ntodd

1 - Admittedly, I do on occassion.  My boss and other folks at my company visit my blog because I told them about it.

[Update: the plot sickens.]