PSF - Reasons #36 and #47 Not to Friend Your Co-Workers on Facebook

Being a manager, I am constantly bombarded with emails and articles from Human Resources about employee recognition.  In one newsletter from Baudville, they listed the following quick tips:

Here are some great ways to send your effective recognition message:

• Write a letter on company letterhead
• Send a creative E-card
• Leave a message on their facebook or MySpace profile
• Mail a greeting card to their home

Facebook?  Leave a message for your employee on facebook?!?!?  First of all, I keep work totally separate from my online life.  Lord knows what would happen if everyone at work knew I was a mommyblogger.  A few months after this email, a friend from work asked me if I knew anything about facebook.  Now, this person is someone that used to work with me, but has since moved to another project and department (marketing - the dark side), so I consider him more as a friend than a co-worker.  So I friended him.  He then outed me by calling me by my last name on my wall as he often does at work (I was still Angela Moonfever then).  That would be reason #36 not to friend a co-worker - no respect for keeping your online identity private.  I was planning to change to my real name anyway, so that only accelerated the process.

I then noticed that he was friends with another co-worker that I do still work with.  So I friended him as well (it's a slippery slope).  On Monday, in the midst of an email conversation, I got this email (slightly embellished for clarification):

To: Angela [Technology Team Leader]
From: [Product Manager who I friended on facebook]
Subject: Re: [Extremely important customer] issue

I can contact them and see if they would be willing to try out [the top secret proposal which we were discussing].

PS  I noticed on your survey of head shots you did not include the picture you have posted outside your office with the rolls of blue tape...I definitely would have voted for that one but since it was not available I had to vote for another.

Reason #47 not to friend your co-workers - Just when you thought you were having a professional email exchange, sabotaged by facebook!

If you're NOT a co-worker of mine, feel free to friend me on facebook at http://profile.to/moonfever0.


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