Perspective: I was fired for blogging

My name is Ellen Simonetti, but I am better known to Web surfers as the Queen of Sky.

I had been a flight attendant for Delta Air Lines for almost eight years when I started my blog, or online diary, in January of this year. I entitled it "Diary of a Flight Attendant."

On Saturday, Sept. 25, I came home to flashing messages on my answering machine.

"Ellen, I need you to call me back. It's about your trip tomorrow," repeated the urgent-sounding voice on the tape.

The voice was that of a Delta Air Lines in-flight supervisor. I immediately dialed the number on the messages, thinking perhaps my Rome flight the next day had been cancelled. What the supervisor told me, however, left me shocked and sick to my stomach.

The reason I started my blog in the first place was as a form of therapy.

"You won't be able to fly your trip tomorrow...it's about some pictures on the Web."

I had to wait more than a week after that phone call to meet with Delta management and find out exactly what was going on. During that very long week, I lived in suspense in my humble Austin, Texas, apartment and prepared for the worst. I assumed I would be fired, so I started consulting with lawyers and other people.

That was when I began to hear stories about people like Heather B. Armstrong, of dooce.com, who was fired because of her blog in 2002. Then there was "the Washingtonienne," who was fired earlier this year because of comments she entered in her blog.

As my story spread on the Web, I started receiving all kinds of e-mails from people on both sides of the Atlantic that employer blog backlash had gotten to. One, a comedian who wished to remain anonymous, told me she was fired from her day job after making a joke about co-workers on her blog.

I have decided to continue to blog and spread my story about employer blog backlash.

The very first thing I did after the phone call from Delta was delete all of the photographs from my blog that I thought my employer could possibly have a problem with. That included all of the pictures of me and fellow crew members posing in Delta Air Lines uniforms.

It was not until the meeting with human resources and my supervisor on Wednesday, Oct. 6, that I learned the official reason for my suspension: "inappropriate" pictures. The unofficial reason (implied through an intimidating interrogation): blogging.

The reason I started my blog in the first place was as a form of therapy. I had lost my mother in September 2003 to cancer and that hit me hard. It was much easier to write about my feelings than talk about them. Now, my employer was telling me that the very thing that had gotten me through those tough times, my blog, could cost me my career. I felt my rights were being infringed upon. And I decided to fight back.

After that meeting, I went home and got online and found plenty of pictures of male Delta Air Lines employees in uniform on the Web. I then searched for a specific company policy prohibiting posting pictures on the Web or blogging, which I could not find.

I had an excellent employment record with Delta Air Lines and had never been previously disciplined. Therefore, I find it odd that I was not at least given a warning before my suspension. I am still trying to figure out why I was singled out. In fact, two days after that meeting with Delta Air Lines management, I filed a sex discrimination complaint with the US Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against Delta Air Lines.

Then, on Oct. 29, 2004, three weeks after I filed that discrimination complaint, I received a call from my supervisor. He advised me over the phone that my employment with Delta Air Lines had been terminated due to "inappropriate pictures in uniform on the Web."

I have decided to continue to blog and spread my story about employer blog backlash. If it is to be defeated, we all have to stand up to this silent and arbitrary foe, one that should never again be allowed to rear its ugly head.

Biography
Ellen Simonetti, aka "Queen of Sky," is appealing to Delta Air Lines to get her job as a flight attendant back. In the meantime, she continues to write her Web log.

More Perspectives

You didn't deserve it but you shouldn't whine

It's a clumsy move by Delta, but it's hardly sex discrimination, nor is it unreasonable. If Ellen can make a living out of posing and pouting (or wants to) then, great, go for it I say! She's attractive, personable, and young (or at least, still in her 20s, which in today's youth-hysteric culture is almost young)

But if she has plans that involved being salaried or don't involve bare flesh, then she must bear in mind that future employers may have to consider how she's now reacting in the public gaze.

Personally, I'd recommend dropping *any* legal action. People (and that includes business sponsors in the future) will be impressed with her ability to smile demurely and say (& do) little or nothing about Delta. She should look to the future. Indeed, if she hadn't publicly mentioned legal action, she might even have enticed Delta's PR department to rehire her as a spokeswoman.

Rule 1: Don't Make Enemies!

Andrew Denny
PR exec, Norfolk, England.

www.grannybuttons.com

[ordaj]

Coporations are supplanting church and state...

...as the major dictators of principles. That is, those that dictate what people see, hear, and can do. They have undue influence and are gaining more. When you cross the corporate doorstep, you enter into a dictatorship and check your rights at the door.

[cupofkona]

Censorship is alive and infesting like a cancer

What you do when not on the job is your right and what they did
and are doing is abusing your freedom of speech. They do not
have to like it. Call it the price of doing business. It is none of
their business. I get it. But it seems others do not. Corporations
are not living beings! And we thinking mortals have rights that
supercede theirs. Period. I already live in a country that is
gearing up for more thought control. But we still, at this time,
anyway, have the right to think and say what we feel, if at least,
on our own time. But this event shows that they are working
hard to kill this right due to their (corporations) alleged feelings.
Hey, corporations can NOT have feelings! Just provide a service
and stay out of peoples lives. Even if they bad-mouth the
company on their own time.

culture shift

Yes, I don't get it either -- people are more willing to live in
public than ever before, but expect it to have no impact to the
things that they write about.

This reminds me of the Friendster case: if you write something
about a business decision, and then a tech journalist picks up
your blog post and quotes it in an article about such business
decisions, isn't it then your fault that this opinion is being
distributed by an industry magazine to readers (and maybe
investors) all around the world?

Blogging *is* publishing, that's the beauty of it, but you can't
ignore the influence publishing carries. If you can't just keep a
paper journal in your backpack to write these kinds of things
down, then don't write about your work or workplace. Seriously.
This is why people who report on companies and their behaviors
usually do so anonymously--because other people *are*
listening.

Have we started adding communications/journalism classes in
high schools yet?

[bdennis410]

Ellen's Blog - tough luck

While I feel sorry about Ellen losing her job, I have to wonder if she was somehow blind to the transition in her blog from consolation blog for her terrible loss of her mother to a rant n' rave blog about Delta.
If it was intended to be personal, she shouldn't have been in uniform, but the reason she was in uniform, was to somehow lend credibility to herself and the blog.
She is paying a high price for her personal speech,a price I have the impression is deserved.
Regardless of the legality, no company should have to keep employees so disloyal that they go public and the company is powerless.
If Delta is sued and they lose, I hope it doesn't reduce their resolve to treat employees fairly, but not have to suffer whiners and complainers on the payroll, poisoning morale. Delta could even benfit from setting up their own blog for employees to "rant n rave." They may not like the results, may even already suspect what employees are going to say, but that doesn't make it less valuable. The airline industry continues to suffer from management decisions to expand in spite of reduced ROI, and justify the bankruptcies and other financial messes as a result of employee cost. It is just not true.
But that's a subject for my own rant n' rave.
You know, it amazes me that when people get caught with their pants down, they don't want to take responsibility for their action, preferring instead to blame others. I can only suggest that people be aware of the consequences of their actions.

[cupofkona]

Companies as goons

This is no different than company goons knocking on your door
with baseball bats in hand. You are fired and your life a mess
and you can not fight back against their might. Gotta love the
new AMERICA. Yippie for the poor corporations and too bad for
the individual now fired. This means all the work by union
people for better everything were wrong. And they did it on the
job!

Mixed feelings

What she did was not completely right, nor is her deluded whinings after the fact. As an aside, you are not good looking, get over yourself. She did go too far, but did she deserve to be fired? I am not sure.

I have had to deal with crappy management, and I did so without getting fired and I got positive results. You have to keep things private until you can't any longer, and then go public carefully.

Part of me feels sorry for her, because she is obviously unable to deal with issues maturely and intelligently, so she got burned. What she needs to do is learn from this, grow up, and move on. A few other posters are correct, if she makes too big of a noise she will likely never get a decent job again. Standing up for yourself is one thing, that makes enemies, but it also brings you respect from others. Jumping up and down like a petulant child impresses no one.

[sdencar]

There isn't a company in the world

That would allow an employee to use the uniform to pose for pictures that had nothing to do with their employment. Police officers get fired for doing it, Firefighters get fired for doing it. We all know that. Think before you act. Businesses have a vested interest in keeping their name clean. Their need to keep their name clean is greater than your need to pose in pictures in THEIR uniform. If you don't know these things by now, then A) you are very slow and B) it was an expensive lesson.

It isn't hard to understand

I checked out her website and it is a pristine example of self promotion. Apparently it started in January of this year and in the few examples I looked at between then and when she was suspended there are numerous complaints against "Anonymous Airlines." While she tried to keep her employer private, as a way to avoid punishment, it wasn't hard to figure out, as Atlanta was constantly mentioned and DA was used on occasion. If she tried to keep it hidden who she was working for then it is obvious that she new what she was saying would lead to punishment, she simply misunderstood that her thinly vieled attempt didn't matter. As for the pictures, they aren't revealing or "innapropriate" in what they show. However, if I ran a company I would probably fire an employee who on company time, in a company vehicle, and in company uniform found time to take suggestive photos and then posted those photos on her online diary, which is more like an online Ellen store. The punishment is stiff, but everyone knows the time in which we live, this "information age" where you need to be careful what you say on the interent. Obviously she is naive and now wants others to foot her bill, she has a donation link on her site. She screwed up and it's a tough lesson, but I wouldn't have handled it any other way if I was Delta. I agree as well that all this legal action is doing is destroying her future employability. I also question her motives for blogging, she said her mother died in Sept. of 2003? This blog started in January of 2004 and I checked the early posts and there's no mention of her mother's death or of there being any reason other than attention and socializing for the start of her blog. She constantly remarks on joining the MHC-Mile High Club-"to many times to count" and of "many stories of wild orgies in foreign countries." She dug her own grave, she was just to dumb to realize it.

Victim or vixen

Use the WWW for personal therapy and claim victimization over the consequences.. what's wrong with that picture? The "Queen" obviously doesn't get it... non causa pro causa? Amazing rationalization.

Delta Managment

Skilled managers talk to people when there is a problem. Weasels act like Delta did in this case. Expect it will cost them.

Good luck to Ellen, bm

You weren't fired for blogging

You were fired for being dumb online and doing so in a company uniform.

Here's a life tip. Make your employer look bad, go find a new job. Not too hard to figure out.

[nitewatch]

You kinda deserved it.

In a way, you kinda deserved it. Sorry. I am a very left-wing, liberal type but if I had a company and my employees were globally offending my operation for the sake of a few laughs and their own inferiority complex I'm afraid they'd be fired. Delta might not be the most employee-centric company around, but the idea of 'team' is tarnished when one uses her clought-lofted uniform to stage complaints and quirrels about her company.

One thought is, if the company is/was so bad why bother working there then or trying to get your job back now? One would wonder if the 'blog' was about the job or about yourself. After all, you do call yourself a 'queen'.

[IT makes sense]

What did you expect?

I'm sure Delta could care less about your blogging, if they weren't implicated either by words or pictures. As an employee, you have an implied obligation to represent your employer. The problem began Delta perceived your blogging and/or photos as disparaging their reputation, and they had to draw the line - the same thing that most organizations would do.

What you do on your own time is your business, but when you drag them into it - it becomes their business, and they need to protect it.

Delta Hypocrisy

I am kind of surprised that some people think Ellen ?deserved? to be fired for posting mildly risqué pictures on the internet. I think it reeks of hypocrisy.

1. Did you see those pictures? They are tame. You see more bare flesh on television shows like ?Desperate Housewives? or the ?Bachelor.? Give me a break.

2. Delta, in the past, used to exploit the good looks of their female flight attendants in their advertising campaigns. Does anyone remember the old ?Fly me!? adds? All the airlines did or still do this to some degree. Sex sells. Sorry if it has turned around and bit them on the butt.

3. Delta has no employee policy regarding blogging.

4. Male Delta employees have personal websites and blogs that contain what some would call ?inappropriate material.? Why aren?t they getting fired?

5. Delta is in enough trouble already. They don?t need this kind of distraction. Fire the idiot who fired Ellen. That person has no human resources judgment whatsoever.

6. Good luck Ellen!

if you want it personal keep it personal

All in all she should take it with a grain of salt... but we do live in a cultural infastructure that currantly frowns on employees who cant keep private personal information out of the job...ie-employee silliness. Too bad she had to get fired to realize that. Blowing off steam, I could understand, complaints, I could understand, if taken to the source, but what company likes bad publicity, and even worse, self agrandizement on their dime? Of course there is nothing out here to stop anyone from saying what ever they want to say about anyone else,but as always,you must expect consequences.

[reustle]

Rule book

After reading the past 30posts, with lots for and a few against her action. I am kinda sickend by thoughs who belive that what she did was wrong and got what was comming to her.

1. If she gave out confidental info, I would agree with her employer. She didn't

2. If she violated a written company rule I would agree with her employer. She indicated there were NO SUCH RULES.

Let me make a subpoint on this there are companies that have written polices that do not allow this activity.

3. If her employer enforced a written policy I would agree with them. From what I can tell shes the only one nailed for it.

What she did perhaps was not the best thing, however there were no rules stopping her eighter before the termination. Unless there was a policy she did nothing wrong.

Its an employers responcablity to make sure thier rules are enforced and to make sure the rules are written down so everyone with in the company can comply. Rather than someone high up who did not like what you did on your own time you get walked out reguardless of the company rule book said or did not say.

Heres my simple example:
If you don't like something someone did on the web or else where, you can't have them arrested without showing they broke an EXISTING LAW.

Ellen best of luck

Watch your back

I don't think this blogger necessarily deserved to get fired, but I do think that assuming that your employer will pay a blind eye to your documenting an inside opinion of their company is naive, to say the least.

When you blog, you tell the world about your own opinion. If the company can find your postings online, there's no reason anyone else can't. And once you've reached this point, what's to stop you slandering their name in black and white.

The bigger issue here occured during the election. Unfortunately blogging opinons became considered as "News" and fact. This is an unfortunate direction for an obvious opinion piece. In the same timeframe, one of the bloggers who ripped on Kerry also happened to be a senior employee of a large midwest bank, and his postings had timestamps during the working day. This causes an issue in a company environment, and I think this will ultimately kill the whole blogging concept.

Remember you're putting your own personal life and information on the net for anyone to read. Most people wouldn't be seen dead divulging such information to a friend. Yet 'bloggers' incorrectly consider the net a neutral medium, and those who risk it, should remember to do so at their own peril.

[basketsbyrett]

I know I should know

What is blog ?

[David Arbogast]

Employment At Will

Employment at will. Ever heard of the concept? It means that you can quit at any time for any reason. It also means that you can be fired at any time for any reason. This is outlined in the employment contract, and assuming she was hired as an employee at will, she has absolutely zero legal defense unless she can prove that Delta broke the law in firing her. If her actions upset management, they reserve the right to terminate her employment. All this talk about personal rights, freedome of speech, etc. is pointless if she signed an employment contract. Your freedom of speech is NOT a guaranteed freedom. Speech is regulated. Always has been, always will be. This is no crusade for human freedom, this is a person who is bitter about being fired for behaving improperly. Perhaps she will learn her lesson... assuming the clueless quit encouraging her. She only gets press because this story is related to a "blog," which for some reason, people think is some amazing new technology.