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.
"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.
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.
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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
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.
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?
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.
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!
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.
Good luck to Ellen, bm
Here's a life tip. Make your employer look bad, go find a new job. Not too hard to figure out.
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'.
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.
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!
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
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.
- Employment At Will
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by David Arbogast
December 17, 2004 12:54 PM PST
- 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.
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