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Re: How E-mail has affected MY life, for one (anecdote(s))
Subject:Re: How E-mail has affected MY life, for one (anecdote(s)) From:Cathy Quinones <quinones -at- MINDSPRING -dot- COM> Date:Mon, 25 Sep 1995 00:23:32 GMT
In message <Pine -dot- LNX -dot- 3 -dot- 91 -dot- 950924162857 -dot- 30238A-100000 -at- amoeba> - Patrick
O'Connell <titanide -at- micro -dot- org> writes:
:>
:>ON THE OTHER HAND...Never, EVER flame someone who roundly deserves it
:>from work, even if what you're flaming them for was received at work.
:>Some folks here may remember my encouraging everybody to send a fellow
:>named Paul Trummel nasty e-mail for getting ahold of the techwr-l
:>subscriber list (from which he had banned for previous egregious
:>misbehavior) and mailing EVERYBODY individually about a new
:>academic-oriented list he was starting up.
(stuff deleted)
Wow, that's one sobering story!
I agree that companies ought to at least "go through the motions" of saying
what goes and what doesn't.
My gut feeling is that one's work e-mail account is in the same league as
using the company stationary for personal mail: not a good idea. I feel
that when one uses that stationary (or e-mail account), one is vesting
oneself with the company's name: whether one intends to or not, one becomes
a spokesperson for the company. I always see these .sig files that say
"opinions mine, not those of my employer" but I bet that such a disclaimer
becomes absolutely useless if the company decides they don't like what the
employee said.
The situation becomes more complicated when one is using the e-mail account
not so much for personal e-mail and newsgroup participation, but when one is
actually doing something vaguely legit :) like reading/posting to this
newsgroup. One IS becoming a better employee if one is learning more about
the tech writing field, that should make the employer happy. But then if one
does goof up, the repercussions are quite scary.
BTW, I am NOT cheering for Patrick's former employees, I agree that they
should have used that situation as a warning. I now have a personal account
but for years used my university account to discuss all sort of incendiary
topics and although the sysadm was never notified of anything (to my
knowledge, I had him bribed with seasonal home-baked goods anyhow), one time
I did post in anger and got warned that my statements were close to being
libel. Wow, that's one long sentence. Anyhow, that incident gave me a
pretty good scare and cured me from creatively flaming while using
someone's name in specific.
One of my sisters works for a pharmaceutical company and told me that at
login, their machine literally flashes a big message about how this piece of
equipment is not to be used for personal purposes.
==============================================================
Cathy Quinones Poicephalus rule!!
quinones -at- mindspring -dot- com %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%% http://www.mindspring.com/~mintz/coverpg.html = Bird Care Info
