If you’re not from Vancouver (or don’t listen to the news), you might not have heard the story of Michael Cox, the 53-year old Vancouver bus driver who just lost his job because he posted some criticisms about the company he worked for on his blog. [READ] It’s an interesting story from several aspects:

1. He loved being a bus driver and only posted one or two critical posts out of dozens. The criticism was constructive and borne out of winter-weather related frustration at his bus getting stuck. Who can blame the guy?
2. Official communications people within the bus company were (allegedly) looking to partner with him because his writing about the life of a bus driver was so good.
3. He was still on probation and thinks that if he was in the permanent role, his status and the union would have prevented him from getting fired.

Now, I can sympathize with Michael. I had to leave a job once for making an honest (but critical) observation about a company’s HR policies on a web forum that allowed users to swap youth recruitment best practices. Turns out the company I had maligned on a small circulation forum was on the advisory board of my employers, read the post and demanded that I be removed from my role. I didn’t get fired but this event (and another unrelated incident) made it clear that my employer and I needed some time apart.

Michael, in a radio interview I heard this morning, said the same thing. Something along the lines of “even if they offered me my job back… I wouldn’t want it back.” He also made some great comments about his preference for “Marxist re-orientation training” as punishment instead of dismissal but the point was that the relationship between employer and employee was now broken.

I wanted to call attention to this story because we all have online lives now – Facebook profiles, LinkedIn profiles, blogs, twitter posts, etc… and those lives can affect the relationship between us and our employers. I think that the bus company should have given Michael a chance to make up for his (mild) public criticism of his employer because the resulting media attention has made the bus company look far worse than any small posting criticizing a logistical screw up ever would have.

I guess my take-home message is two-fold:

Employees – think before you post. You could get fired.

Employers – think before you fire. You might think you’re doing damage control when what you’re actually doing is making things worse.