BlogLine

Employee Fired for Tweeting Complaint About Sex Jokes

3/26/13

By: David Cole
This USA Today article is another example of how social media is presenting new legal issues in the workplace. According to the story, the tech company SendGrid fired a female employee named Adria Richards because she tweeted complaints about a group of men sitting behind her at a conference making sex jokes.  You can read Ms. Richards’s play-by-play tweets about the jokes (complete with pictures of the alleged jokers) by clicking here.  According to the story, SendGrid says it terminated Ms. Richards, because it “doesn’t support how she reported the conduct.”  This raises a number of interesting issues, but at the very least it is a good reminder of the new challenges employers face because of social media.  Time will tell, but what do you think – fair decision or cautionary tale?