Skip to content

First world technical problems

A woman in Australia who unfriended a colleague on Facebook after a dispute at work was found by a tribunal to have committed workplace bullying.
The Fair Work Commission, a workplace tribunal, said the decision by Lisa Bird, a real estate agent sales administrator, to unfriend her colleague Rachel Roberts showed a “lack of emotional maturity” and was “indicative of unreasonable behaviour.”

OK, stick a fork in it, this civilisation is done.

13 thoughts on “First world technical problems”

  1. From the end of the article:
    “The Fair Work Commission didn’t find that unfriending someone on Facebook constitutes workplace bullying,” Josh Bornstein, a lawyer at the firm Maurice Blackburn, told ABC News.
    “What the Fair Work Commission did find is that a pattern of unreasonable behaviour, hostile behaviour, belittling behaviour over about a two-year period, which featured a range of different behaviours including berating, excluding and so on, constituted a workplace bullying.”

    Gives you a rather different but more accurate impression. Too late by then though, isn’t it? Who reads that far?

  2. Yep, being unfriended on Facebook was just the final straw:

    “Ms Roberts listed other claims of unfair treatment by Mrs Bird, who was accused of failing to say hello in the morning” …

  3. “The Fair Work Commission, a workplace tribunal, said the decision by Lisa Bird, a real estate agent sales administrator, to unfriend her colleague Rachel Roberts showed a “lack of emotional maturity””

    Suggests there’s a definite lack of emotional maturity at “The Fair Work Commission” too.

    Anyway, women eh?

  4. Its increasingly becoming apparent that there is a huge divide in society – those people who are on Twatbook, and those who aren’t. The latter being the sort of people one wishes to associate with and the former avoid if possible. I’m prepared to allow a sliding scale – the odd message to keep in touch with family members and real life friends who happen to live on the other side of the planet, fine. Anyone who has ‘friends’ they have never met, and logs on obsessively to document their every thought, mood state and bowel movement, avoid at all costs.

  5. Bloke in North Dorset

    “Anyway, women eh?”

    Yep. If this had been me n of the following would have happened:

    A punch would have been throw. – least likely.

    Thy would have agreed to differ and rubbed along.

    They’d have gone to the pub and made up their differences in time honoured fashion.

    One would have left.

  6. Jim, one can reach a state of health and age that one needs to record one’s every bowel movement. I’ll grant you that it seems needlessly American to “share” this info, though. The French are great students of their stools; do that Facebook about it all?

  7. Actually FB is more about the other end of the digestion process – there appears to be a mad desire to photograph food before its eaten, and post the pics on FB. So its like photographing ones bowel movements, before they happen.

  8. Yes, I noted that the Yanks I was with in Normandy this week were photographing every course. I didn’t realise that it was to Facebook it.

  9. Probably more like to Instagram or Tumblr it (I am down with da yoof as you can see).

    I use Facebook almost entirely to see photos of my great-nephews and nieces doing small child stuff and the occasional photo of what I’ve been up to as proof of life for the maternal unit, who worries. Also recipes, occasionally. Posting inspirational shit or stalking people is not my bag.

  10. TN “The fact that unfriending on Facebook is mentioned, let alone considered, in this case says enough.”

    If it’s a part of a pattern of behaviour to specifically exclude a person then it could be rather nasty. It’s perhaps a bit pathetic that it’s regarding adults but if it were happening in a school, well there are enough bullying-suicide stories out there to show us how damaging it can be.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *