Blockbuster Fires Blogger for 'Divulging Confidential Information'

Blogger Earnest Pettie was terminated for "divulging confidential information" in the following post about the Blockbuster price increase: Blockbuster Total Access–What went wrong?. Here's a selection from the post:

To make matters worse, Blockbuster bungled Total Access further by changing the Total Access program prices and benefits and failing to effectively notify the customers of the changes. Customers lost the monthly free rental they received simply for being members, and they also lost their unlimited exchanges unless they subscribed to a more expensive plan. As for rank and file morale, there is nothing that brightens one’s day more than explaining to customers that they are going to be getting less for their money. The communication from Blockbuster on this effort was so poor that we are still explaining these changes that happened months ago.

A Blockbuster spokesperson would not comment on Pettie's firing, but had this to say about employees that have blogs:

I can tell you that we do not have an issue with employees who participate in blogging or have personal blogging sites. In fact, we have many employees who blog.

However, both for competitive reasons and because we are a publicly traded company, we have strict policies stating that employees are not allowed to disclose information about our business plans, proprietary marketing programs, financial information or other confidential information. We also make it clear that only designated employees are authorized to speak or otherwise release information on behalf of the company.

All employees know about these policies. As a matter of fact, when we join the company, each of us signs a document saying we understand these policies and that we understand a violation could result in termination.

As a publicly traded company, we have a responsibility to ensure that everyone adheres to this code of conduct.

If you're going to blog about the company you work for, be sure to understand the ground rules, and be very careful about what you say (and how you say it).

Comments

[Hss]

Why don't you just blog under an alias ? That way they won't know who you are.

[Steven Hoober]

Its my experience its impossible to be careful enough, at least at a big company. You are purportedly bound to all current policies, whether you have been expressly informed of them or not.

I got in (minor) trouble at my last job at a Fortune 50 telecom for talking about stuff that had already been published in Business Week. I simply removed myself from all relevant forums and never, ever blogged about my work there. It was stupid, and one of many factors that made me move on and go to a small place where I write on the company blog on a regular basis, wrote much of the pattern library wiki, etc.

I do think this has a strong chilling effect on innovation and sharing. Not nearly enough folks at the big companies talk, even generally, about anything even peripherally involved with their business. Its too bad really.

[mattd0g]

I'm not sure what he disclosed in terms of information about "business plans, proprietary marketing programs, financial information or other confidential information". It seems from that post that anyone could have written it.

[Gir]

It's baloney. The policies are intentionally broad. If they don't like what you say, they want to be able to punish you, and the policy is just the legalese way of making sure they can do so without risk. More and more, America (heck, the whole world) is governed by the corporations for the corporations.

[Corey3rd]

Blockbuster is evil to their employees. When I was a BBOTA customer I became friendly with a few of the clerks. One of the managers was explaining how the company refused to let him use his vacation days for several months and then they announced you couldn't carryover your vacation days which voided out the days they had in hand, but weren't able to use. On top of that, BB would keep closing stores in my area and forcing two full time managers to become two assistant managers working a full time job - and if you didn't like it - tough!

CEO Keyes with his vision of turning BB in to Apple stores will never work since this man has Zero People skills. He has little care for customers and employees. To fire this guy for basically saying what a lot of us have said over the past few years is bogus. He's merely trying to maintain silence until his golden parachute gains a ripcord.

[Plus]

Blogging is so 2007, seriously.

[Braden]

Yeah, corporations are evil! OOOOO (in a scary voice)

I'm sure if you had him as an employee at your business (let me guess, 'Gir' has never run a business!), you would be thrilled to have him blogging and exclaiming publicly just how horrible your company is. As a matter of fact, you'd give him a raise and promotion to Chief Spokesman on Public Affairs.

I know someone who got fired from Netflix for blogging and divulging information they should not have.