Forums › Life › Politics, Media & Current Events › UK : Scot : Waterstones sacks blogger
TBH although I consider blogs to be rather self-indulgent (and potentially incriminating to people like us!) – and its well known that corporates and public sector organisations are paranoid over what their employees may say on the net, I can’t believe a bookseller in a modern European country which permits free speech would do this… I will certainly boycott them after this!
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/01/11/waterstones_blog/
By Tim Richardson
Published Tuesday 11th January 2005 12:40 GMT
Bookseller Waterstone’s has sacked a long-serving employee for writing a blog. Joe Gordon from Edinburgh, who worked for the company for t11 years, says he was dismissed because he “brought the company into disrepute”.
His Woolamaloo Gazette was started in 1992 and is a satirical diary that, in Gordon’s own words, enables him “to vent steam on stories which are bugging me or amusing me and hopefully make people think at the same time”.
While most of the material he covers does not involve his work, he does occasionally mention his time at Waterstone’s. As he puts it: “Like many folk I am not always happy at work…and coin terms such as ‘Bastardstone’s’ and have a character called ‘Evil Boss’ (my equivalent to Dilbert’s Pointy Haired Boss – in fact I compared head office directives to being in a Dilbert cartoon).”
While many people have already judged these this to be harmless, Waterstone’s appears to believe they provide sufficient grounds for dismissal. Now Mr Gordon is angry at the way he’s been treated and believes that, if the company was so offended, the matter could have been dealt with just a “quiet word”.
Wrote Gordon: “I am not a serf; I am not an indentured servant. I am a free man with the right of freedom of expression. The company does not own me, body and soul – conforming to their rules at work is to be expected, but in your own time and space? How can anyone be expected to go through their personal life in fear of saying the wrong thing? No-one should.
“This has left me dreadfully upset. That a company I have given so many years to could treat me in such a brutal manner is despicable. That a book company thinks so little of the primacy of freedom of expression is alarming. I pointed out that Waterstone’s has stated publicly several times in the past that as a bookseller they believe in the freedom of expression and not in censorship.”
As well as winning the support of other bloggers Gordon has also won the backing of author Richard Morgan, who has added his voice to the chorus of complaints over the sacking. In a letter to the company he wrote: “While I don’t wish to interfere in company business, I have to say I think this bears comparison with taking disciplinary action based on private conversation overheard in a pub, and raises some disturbing issues of freedom of speech. Waterstone’s is, after all, a bookseller, whose stock in trade is the purveying of opinion, not all of it palatable to those concerned.
“You sell books which offer serious critique of the corporate environment and government, but do not expect to suffer punitive action from government or corporate quarters as a result. You sell books which criticise and satirise religious and political groups, but you do not expect to be firebombed by extremists as a result. Surely Joe has the right to let off steam in his free time without having to fear for his livelihood as a result.
“The action that has been taken so far bears more resemblance to the behaviour of an American fast food chain than a company who deal in intellectual freedoms and the concerns of a pluralist liberal society.”
Despite repeated attempts to contact Waterstone’s no one was available for comment at the time of writing. ®
bunch of bastards 😡
I’ve just checked the chaps blog (can only do this from home due to web filters) – the news gets worse.
I’ve been shocked at some of the stuff I’ve seen on message boards etc that people post from work (hardly surprising web filters and monitoring software sells well) – and I could well understand a company getting rid of some spotty kid who had spent loads of time on the net, neglected customer-facing work to do so and posted extremely defamatory or abusive stuff about customers or colleagues.
But this was a mature, loyal employee who had participated in many corporate promotions for the same bookstore, and had made a handful of comments about his work amongst loads of other non-related content, most of it which was related to books and writing.
its actually an amazing PR own goal for waterstones; they could have made this blog a “win-win” for everyone (he tells people about new books which they could sell!) – if some of his jokes were a bit “near the knuckle” he should have been given the opportunity to edit them –
but without the problem I wouldn’t have even known about this blog, and now I will tell everyone I know who likes books to avoid Waterstones – I work with loads of accountants and other bookworms, and many of my friends are students, how many potential lost sales is that?
In principal I would like to support this guy by boycotting Waterstones, especially when the guys been a ‘good employee’.
In reality I know I struggle to do my shopping in a way that matches my ethics [1]
There are so many conflicts of interest and it’s not easy to find out the truth about where products are manufactured or grown etc. Even companies that claim to be acting for the greater good sometimes turn out to be rather spurious (e.g. http://www.partyvibe.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2065) and even some charities are totally inefficient.
so voting with your money is less easy than it appears.
What I would like to try though, is a series of co-odinated mini riots in waterstones stores all over the country. 😉 groups of protesters could enter stores and proceed to remove books from the shelves while others presented a list of demands to head office (or anybody who was interested) :confused:
1) reinstate Joe Gordon from edinburgh
2) with a nice pay rise
3) promise never to do it again
4) publically string up a scapegoat
😀
it would make a f***ing change to the usual accetance of coporate bull versus the people though, wouldn’t it?
[1] although i’ll probably have a deepseated psychological aversion to waterstones from now on and I won’t even remember why 😉
In reality I know I struggle to do my shopping in a way that matches my ethics [1]
There are so many conflicts of interest and it’s not easy to find out the truth about where products are manufactured or grown etc. Even companies that claim to be acting for the greater good sometimes turn out to be rather spurious (e.g. http://www.partyvibe.com/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2065) and even some charities are totally inefficient.
so voting with your money is less easy than it appears.
it needs vigilance, and the skills of a private detective to find out the true facts. That said I do do it, to the point of carrying out Companies House searches, checking up trade union sources as well as corporate brochures, investigating suppliers’ environmental policies, searching newsgroups and boards for info customers and employees also provide, visiting places, asking difficult questions etc…
you will often find a company which behaves badly has many customer complaints, negativity spreads throughout the organisation.
I know I can’t always pick 100% eco-friendly/sociallly concious stuff as there is often always a large corporate involved somewhere but I try to do my best particularly for large purchases
For instance I made sure the last bicycle I bought was assembled in Britain by a well-respected British company which retained its UK factory workforce rather than purchasing a machine from their main competitors who had just outsourced their entire manufacturing from the UK to some Asian sweatshop and were known throughout the 1970s to operate a very hierarchical and misogynistic corporate structure with bad industrial relations… [to the point where they lost substantial market share as the male-dominated board simply refused to listen to their female marketing director on several occasions!)
OK the components of both sets of bikes were made by Shimano and Im not sure how eco-friendly they are (particularly with some of their “planned obsolences” strategies) – but no UK manufacturer makes bicycle parts in quantity any more 🙁
I also made sure the machine was supplied by a family-run local business in preference to a chain store.
I often find with smaller businesses that you can often get an impression of “good/bad karma” when you enter them; its easy to tell someone who is genuinely enthusiastic and wants to help you as well as make some money from the forced US-corporate style “customer service” found in large corporate run places..
1) reinstate Joe Gordon from edinburgh
2) with a nice pay rise
3) promise never to do it again
4) publically string up a scapegoat
😀
it would make a f***ing change to the usual accetance of coporate bull versus the people though, wouldn’t it?
I’ve just burst out laughing at the though of a protest in a bookshop of all places. it would be even better if carried out by people dressed like librarians, university profs etc in tweed jackets, steel rimmed specs etc..
I tend to get my books second-hand from Oxfam anyway, Reading is full of well-read hippies and wooly liberals so they often have a good stock…
have you seen the recent remake of around the world in 80 days with jackie chan in it? you know the people playing the Royal Institute of Science?
costumes like that.
Outraged Victorian Establishment Learn-ed Men ransaking the place
the grauniads picked up on this as well a couple of weeks ago
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/weblogs/story/0,14024,1388466,00.html
its still 3 in their top 10 stories
how many liberal bookworms read the grauniad I wonder?
IF I were a shareholder of waterstones I’d be calling for their head of marketing to be kicked out whether they re-instated the blogger or not..
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Forums › Life › Politics, Media & Current Events › UK : Scot : Waterstones sacks blogger
