Waterstone’s says bookseller brought firm into disrepute
Patrick Barkham
Wednesday January 12, 2005
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/weblogs/story/0,14024,1388466,00.html
This is what it’s all about: http://www.woolamaloo.org.uk
A bookseller has become the first blogger in Britain to be sacked from his job because he kept an online diary in which he occasionally mentioned bad days at work and satirised his “sandal-wearing” boss.
Joe Gordon, 37, worked for Waterstone’s in Edinburgh for 11 years but says he was dismissed without warning for “gross misconduct” and “bringing the company into disrepute” through the comments he posted on his weblog.
Published authors and some of the 5 million self-published bloggers around the globe said it was extraordinary that a company advertising itself as a bastion of freedom of speech had acted so swiftly to sack Mr Gordon, who mentions everything from the US elections to his home city of Edinburgh in the satirical blog he writes in his spare time.
Mr Gordon, a senior bookseller who rarely mentioned work in his blog and did not directly identify his branch of Waterstone’s, said he had offered to stop posting anything about his working life online when the company called a disciplinary meeting. According to his union, Waterstone’s rejected his plea despite it not having any guidelines on whether its employees are allowed to keep weblogs.
“This wasn’t a sustained attack,” Mr Gordon told the Guardian. “I was not deliberately trying to harm the company. I was venting my spleen.
“This was moaning about not getting your birthday off or not getting on with your boss. I wasn’t libelling anyone or giving away trade secrets.”
Mr Gordon joined Waterstone’s while a student in 1993, a year after he began a satirical newsletter which evolved into his blog, called the Woolamaloo Gazette.
Named after Monty Python’s fictional University of Woolloomooloo, the blog contains the typical musings of online diarists across the world, linking to interesting websites and sounding off about current affairs and favourite films. There is much to please Waterstone’s: most of the blog is devoted to extolling the virtues of reading and Mr Gordon’s favourite science fiction and graphic novels.
In the past two months, the bookseller, who helped set up a branch of Waterstone’s, ran bookclubs and appeared on radio and TV for his company, mentioned his work twice.
On one occasion, he ranted about his “sandal-wearing” manager he nicknamed “Evil Boss”, which he said was a caricature like the “Pointy Haired Boss” in the Dilbert cartoons. In another posting, Mr Gordon joked about “Bastardstone’s”.
After he was suspended pending an investigation into his blog, he was called before a formal disciplinary meeting and sacked last week.
“The book trade can only exist with freedom of speech and information,” he said last night. “It is a big personal blow to me to lose my job and it also has grave implications beyond that – for anybody who works for any company and blogs, which is thousands of people.”
The move has also alarmed the global internet community. Mr Gordon has received dozens of emails from other bloggers who have heard about his plight, with some pledging to boycott Waterstone’s.
While Boris Johnson wrote about his sacking from the Tory frontbench on his blog, it is believed to be the first time in Britain a blogger has been dismissed for what they published on the web.
In the US, Ellen Simonetti was sacked from her job as a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines after her bosses saw pictures of her posing in her uniform on her website, which recounted the adventures of an anonymous flight attendant who worked for “Anonymous Airline”.
Jessica Cutler, a 24-year-old secretary at a senator’s office who wrote about selling sex to officials in Washington under the online name of Washingtonienne, was outed on the internet and sacked from her job.
The literary world has also spoken out against the sacking. Richard Morgan, the science fiction author, has written a letter of protest to Waterstone’s.
“This bears comparison with taking disciplinary action based on private conversations overheard in a pub, and raises some disturbing issues of freedom of speech,” he said.
“Waterstone’s is, after all, a bookseller, whose stock in trade is the purveying of opinion, not all of it palatable to those concerned. 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.”
Five years ago, an award-winning advertising campaign for Waterstone’s focused on the importance of freedom of speech. One image featured a burned book with the slogan: “Adolf Hitler, Pol Pot & Mao Tse-Tung were right about one thing. The Power of Books.”
A spokeswoman for Waterstone’s confirmed Mr Gordon had been sacked. “At this stage we can’t comment on it,” she said. “He has two opportunities to appeal after he receives his letter of dismissal through the post.”
The Retail Books Association, which represents 6,000 people working in the book trade, said it would help Mr Gordon appeal against his dismissal. If an appeal with a regional area manager is rejected, the blogger could take the matter to an employment tribunal.
According to the RBA, Waterstone’s should introduce guidelines determining what its employers can say online about their work.
“We are hopeful we can get him reinstated,” said David Pickles, president of the RBA. “We feel it was heavy-handed and they have overreacted. The company has no guidelines to say ‘please don’t’ [write about work on a weblog] . They shouldn’t use a hammer to crack a nut.
“Some of the products they sell that are on open view to the public upset people far more. If MPs can slag each other off in parliament and the press, then surely Joe having a bad day and putting it down on the website should be allowed.
“As long as there is no one being discriminating or offensive, if it is just fun and opinion, then I can’t see it being a problem. It’s just how he felt on the day.”
Adventures with Evil Boss
Monday, Dec 13 2004
On the way home from a dreadful day at work (I should really have phoned in sick but couldn’t face the hassle this causes), I walked rather than catching the bus to get the blood flowing a little. Not far from my flat is a new bakery/pastry store, The Old Bakehouse, which also has an art gallery in the basement. Delicious pastries and artwork? Now how cool is that? Groovy.
Tuesday, Nov 16
Bad things recently. Having to pay Edinburgh bastard moneygrubbing council’s tax, may they choke on every penny. Return to shift working as Evil Boss decrees even those now in stockroom must do late and early shifts, which is a waste of time for that post.
Xmas working hours brought in early – first shift now starts at 7.30 bloody am, which is fucking ridiculous.
Evil Boss fucking me off by refusing my requests for a day’s holiday on the 31st of December for my birthday and the first week of January off as I have taken for the last few years …
Evil Boss then has cheek to ask me to work one of the bloody bank holidays in the week he refused me off. Cheeky smegger. Said no.
Noticing he has put me down for one of those days anyway, the sandal-wearing bastard. Words will be exchanged – if he gives me my birthday off I will do his bank holiday day. If not, he can kiss my magnificent Celtic ass, since it is voluntary.
Monday Nov 8
Yes, my day slaving for Bastardstone’s was lightened (never an easy task on a Monday) by one of the avalanche of humour books that appear before Xmas, Far From [Dull] and Other Places by Dominic Greyer …
Amusing myself this week with Rich Hall’s excellent biography of his redneck “uncle”, Otis Lee Crenshaw: I Blame Society, and probably pissing everyone in our staffroom out by laughing my arse off
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/weblogs/story/0,14024,1388466,00.html
This is what it’s all about: http://www.woolamaloo.org.uk
