PR/Marketing blogger John Cass has a great post about the recent termination of an employee who blogged without permission. Sounds like there are two sides to the story. But the thing that struck me most is that the employee says he was fired by voicemail.
Reminds me of a discussion I had at Eastwick. I asked, in an email, "what's the worst 'breakup' story you ever heard?" The best entries came from folks who had heard of imaginative resignations. Top entries:
--A couple who left their jobs at Noah's Bagels by faxing in their resignation letters.
--An employee at a fast-food restaurant who quit via the speakerphone in the drive-through lane.
Takeway: we're all getting a little too comfy with machines as proxies for people. All three transgressions in this post are kinda amusing, but they highlight a bigger story about how we tend to relate to machines like people. Not that I haven't sinned myself in this general realm (though I have never fired or quit by machine). Some of my best friends are computers. They're kinder, smarter, and they don't talk back (yet). But that's the problem.
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