Just an unforgettable, yet sickening story about a fellow educator.

I know there are some employers who want to be clear about their potential image concerns with their employees & their social media use.

I certainly prefer this approach, which I think is more employee-rights focussed than other institutions I've heard about from friends & #socialmedia alter-egos.

For example, I heard one, awful fairy tale about a female uni Prof, in another country, who I imagine, was at least 14 (or more) years in the Lord, who accidentally happened upon an email one Saturday afternoon (it had been sent on Saturday) from one senior-manager demanding her attendance at a 9am Monday morning meeting, because (among other things) she wrote a blog.

The story my friend heard, was that at a meeting later that day, where her inquisitor apparently confronted her about this an other terrible discoveries, she was apparently informed by her Union rep, that for her information, she could've been suspended for writing an unauthorised blog under the university's publications policy.

It's hardly a wonder, to imagine her surprise to be suspended from her tenured post, by sputnik radar, the next day.

Reportedly, she was already clinically depressed, potentially due to employment stress, recent-traumatic-bereavement & other personal issues.

It turned out later, after she'd had a kind'v mental breakdown, resigned because the employer wouldn't allow her to be off sick in the middle of a suspension, because there were serious questioned to be answered, that her's and her colleagues' Union negotiated employment contracts, had been altered twice that year without proper discussion with either the employees, or their trade union representatives. Isn't it, a weird story?

It was suggested to the woman, several years later, following a period of stress-induced, mental illness, by another, completely unrelated as a legal entity,  employer, who took the chance & believed in her, again, that it wasn't considered a good idea for her to continue to communicate with students on Facebook, although she'd never experienced issues previously, with such communications, in fact the opposite 😊

I'm just glad, I'm not her. I've never met her, but I do think she's destined, somehow for sainthood.

I'm also going to take a valuable, moral from her story.

Who would've considered that throughout her whole ordeal, that woman continued to feed her family?

I love independent thought & speech & think there's more to life than work, but I do think the consumer culture in America has consumed them so extensively that some customers there seem to want to use every word as some sort'v weapon against the service provider, with employees as some sort conduit to a discount. Such a shame, because it gets in the way'v of a good conversation.