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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.
159 comments
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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
Let's see if that advice holds true in other real world situations: If you're robbed, you didn't deserve it, but you shouldn't call the police so people will respect you for being strong. No, that didn't work. Lets try a few more.
If you're company demands that you work on Saturday without compensation, you shouldn't whine, but do whatever they tell you because it is your privilege to work for them. Still not sure your theory works. Lets try a more extreme case. Surely that will work.
The American Negro didn't deserve to be enslaved, but they shouldn't have whined about it, but accepted their fate. The German Jews didn't deserve to be exterminated, but they shouldn't have whined, but accepted their fate. Still nothing.
You know: Either you didn't think your comment through, or you've really been beaten into submission.
Fight, Queen of Sky, Fight!
In my experience, the squeaky wheel gets the grease. In my experience, those who complain about others whining usually are the ones doing most of the whining. Pathetic!
Rock on, Ellen! You are my Queen of the Sky!
This girl is doing the work of hero's, standing up for personal freedom, which is the single most important aspect of a free trade economy to function properly. You should spend some time with your nose in an economics book, then an ethics book, then re-evaluate what you think about a companies right to use personal life any way they want.
once again, wow, ignorance is bliss
People will NOT be impressed (some might, apparently you will) by her just taking this, but just ignoring this won't make delta or anyone else from doing this again. Saying that this is a "clumsy move" by delta and then not doing anything about it is like saying that a child who kicked a cat should NOT have kicked it, but then not telling the child they were wrong.
How were the pictures inappropriate? Because she was in uniform, apparently, and obviously they have no problem with people in uniform as they've allowed other Delta Airlines members to post their pictures (she commented men, but I've seen some women as well)
This may or may not be sexual discrimination, but it's most definately some sort of discrimination. I'd seek to find others in the same situation and file a class action suit
Smile Demurely? People have been saying crap like this to women for too long. When was the last time you told a man to smile demurely and say and do nothing about being unjustly fired? You know what people will be impressed with? If she goes and kicks Delta in the nuts and gets compensated for this crap.
Give me a break.
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?
need Previews in these forums...
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.
I can't find any other news where Delta has done that.
There are other blogs and pictures on the web of Delta personel in uniform that are not Delta owned or operated sites.
IMHO, To be a valid policy it has to apply to everyone in the company.
Adm they have shot themselves in the foot: Before they decided to fire her, the blog attracted less attention. A simple conversation, urging her to tidy up the blog, would have saved them a lot of trouble.
Im quite used to uniforms. My father is a retired general, my uncle is master of a cruise vessel (at the age of 72!) and I assure you, the never ever have had fantasies about restrictions like those.
That the Soviet union now is history does not mean you have to re-create it over there, folks!
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 arent they getting fired?
5. Delta is in enough trouble already. They dont 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.
Last I looked Delta is not congress, nor any governemt agency, so the first admendment does not apply. I am very rarely on the side of corporations but in this case Delta is correct.
She is unintelligent and angry, a dangerous combination. She walked into a huge fire without protection, so she got burned. Maybe she was mistreated, but she handled it wrong, so it is almost immaterial at this point. If she wouldn't have posted those pictures, and not named Delta she would still have a job.
Everyone makes mistakes, the smart ones learn from it. Looking at her juvinile antics since getting a well deserved smakc, it looks like she is in for a rough ride.
She was not fired for blogging, she was fired for being an idiot. The fact she can't see that, shows Delta made the right decision. Ellen is turning into a media ******** she is not interesting at all, so sooner or late, she will have to resort to dropping the media portion of that title, so she can make a living.
This is NOT a first amendment, freedom of speech issue. The fact is that private corporations are not bound by the first amendment AT ALL.
The first amendment EVEN SAYS THIS. It specifically prohibits CONGRESS from making any laws that prohibit free speech, i.e. the government can't come and shut your blog down.
Companies can fire you for whatever legal reasons they want.
Individuals who have gripes against companies can potentially instantaneously destroy much of the goodwill those companies possess. Employees are in an even better position to damage a company's goodwill, but, unlike a regular individual, employees have a duty to the company not to destroy such goodwill.
Consequently, if the airline believed that its goodwill was jeopardized by its employee, it had the right to protect its asset.
THINGS I HAVE SKILLS AT:
Cooking
Dancing
Sleeping
Eating
Certain sexual positions
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I was thinking last night about how I think about my blog way too much. It is like my baby. And today, I was very worried about it since I was leaving town. So here I am at a company computer in the airport in my base city to check on my baby blog before my flight to Bogota.
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reach airport via employee parking lot bus
for the first time in months, I actually check in on time for my commuter flight
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I left for Munich in February, not a good month to be in Germany. So, every weekend I would use my Eurail pass to go to Italy. Problem was, pretty soon my Eurail pass expired. I had the bright idea to change the expiration date. I had also made a color copy of the pass before I validated it. (The pass had to be validated once by the travel agency, and once by the first train station where I wished to use it.)
Everything worked fine, until one day I was on a train somewhere in Northern Italy and the train conductor noticed something suspicious. I was removed from the train at the next station (Mantova, I believe), and taken to the conductor's office. My altered Eurail pass was confiscated. Several Italian rail employees came in to intimidate me. They could not figure out why I did not speak Italian, given my Italian last name.
Anyway, they made me fill out some paperwork and told me I had to pay a fine. Of course I never paid it. I didn't have cash on me, or that was my story anyway.
After they released me, I bought a $1 ticket to the next train station, where I pulled out my perfect color copy and had it validated and continued my travel to my next destination. I traveled all over Europe on that fake pass.
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I told him to read it to check out my sexcapades.
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He also said I should add more details about the sexcapades... like Raul's crooked dick, and how I not only felt like a hooker, when in bed with B, but a donkey, as well.
I said he was probably right about that. But I want to keep my blog "R" rated, not "XXX."
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Rough sex is not my cup of tea (hair-pulling, butt-slapping, anal sex).
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I've been flying for over 7 years now, and have plenty of stories of drunken orgies in various miscellaneous foreign countries. But I'm sure nobody wants to hear about those ;-)
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Because Anonymous Airlines FIRES or INDEFINITELY SUSPENDS all of its good looking flight attendants :( They prefer them fat and ugly.
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Is Atlanta on the East Coast ?"
QueenofSky replies:
Is it East of the Mississippi? That's what I consider the East Coast. FYI Atlanta is Deltas big hub, and clearly identifies her employer.
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"How many times have you joined the Mile High Club in the past year?"
QueenofSky replies:
Sorry, Queen of Sky has lost track ;)
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"Are you a member of the `Mile High Club`?"
QueenofSky replies:
Of course... I have the official pin.
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If you are a present or former Delta employee who feels that Delta discriminated against you because of your GENDER or because you were involved in UNION activities, please send an email to: mediaqueen @ gmail.com, or call the law offices of Gary Bledsoe at: 512-322-9992.
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Delta Air Lines uses lies and dirty tricks to fire people for no good reason
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YES, internet communications DOES count as harassment. Good thing I have a record of all IP addresses of my nasty commenters!- Isnt it funny that she wants to use what other people say on the internet about her against them, but feels she should be able to say whatever she wants?
I probably looked at 1% of her site and came up with this. I cant imagine what Delta, who has looked through the whole site, has come up with. Ellen simply mistook the internet at an arena where your words cant be used against you. Tough lesson, but probably deserved as she admits to numerous examples of inappropriate sexual behavior, talks badly about Delta, admits to Federal Offenses in foreign countries, etc. There are some things one needs to keep to themselves, apparently Ellen didnt get that memo.
BEFORE or AFTER she was fired? If they were made after she was fired then it might be stupid but it could not have counted towards any charges/reasons for her being fired.
I don't understand the uproar over this firing. From what I can see, QoS used her blog to post a great deal of material either critical of the company and/or which portrayed the company in a very unfavorable light. As a flight attendant, she is a very visible symbol of the company, and as such her comments are especially damaging to the company's image. (Would there be such a controversy if she were a baggage handler? Would her blog have been nearly as popular?)
There's an interesting thought. What if Delta had spoken with her and said, "Look, because of your comments and actions portraying our company in an extremely negative way, you are no longer suitable as a Delta flight attendant. If you would like to continue working in the company, however, we could transfer you to a less visible position. Like, baggage handling. Or tickets reservations."
How do you think she would have taken that offer? Keep a job at Delta and still be able to post to her blog? I doubt it.
Anyhow, good job checking her blog and summarizing your results. I wish others had done so before posting.