BLOGGER FIRED FROM WATERSTONE'S BOOKSTORE: This has nothing to do with ancient Judaism, but quite a bit to do with blogging and bloggers. Also, it's a local story about a place with which I am somewhat familiar. The Guardian has the most detailed account I could find, although I heard about it first from the Biblioblog Blog and lots of newspapers and (of course) bloggers are taking an interest:

Blogger sacked for sounding off

Waterstone's says bookseller brought firm into disrepute

Patrick Barkham
Wednesday January 12, 2005
The Guardian

A bookseller has become the first blogger in Britain to be sacked from his job because he kept an online diary in which he occasionally mentioned bad days at work and satirised his "sandal-wearing" boss.

Joe Gordon, 37, worked for Waterstone's in Edinburgh for 11 years but says he was dismissed without warning for "gross misconduct" and "bringing the company into disrepute" through the comments he posted on his weblog.

Published authors and some of the 5 million self-published bloggers around the globe said it was extraordinary that a company advertising itself as a bastion of freedom of speech had acted so swiftly to sack Mr Gordon, who mentions everything from the US elections to his home city of Edinburgh in the satirical blog he writes in his spare time.

[...]

The Guardian Newsblog has more here

For those of you outside Britain, Waterstone's is a major bookseller here, something like Barnes & Noble in the USA. I buy (or at least have bought) countless books from them.

Two thoughts. If there were an award for stupidity, I would give Mr. Gordon the second prize. You won't find many people who support free speech more than I do, but even I see a difference between grumbling about your employer in the pub with your cronies after work hours and doing so in an interview with a national or international newspaper. Blogging is rather more like the latter than the former. It's a pretty-much-permanent international medium easily available to any reader who wants to consult it. It's not quite the same as a mainstream-media interview, in that such interviews are dependably widely read while a blog's readership is generally small. But if a blog story or post catches attention, its readership can swell enormously overnight. It strikes me as very imprudent to post profanely critical comments about one's boss and workplace in such a medium, while telling us the name of the company and the more-or-less specific location. It may not be illegal or actionable, but it is in very poor taste and likely to create bad feelings.

Thoughtful and constructive criticisms of the company's actions and policies may be another matter, although usually (not quite always) they are best dealt with privately within the company. But the comments at issue were clearly just venting.

First prize for stupidity, however, definitely would go to Waterstone's for the way they have handled this. The sensible thing, as Mr. Gordon observes, would have been to approach him privately, tell him the posts were offensive, and ask him to delete them and not to do it again. Problem solved. If he wanted to make a civil rights case out of it then, that would have been his decision and his problem. But I doubt he would have.

Instead, they chose the course guaranteed to draw the world's attention to Mr. Gordon, his blog, his comments, and the company who fired him. Perhaps they thought they needed to make an example of him. Guess what? Boy have they! He is now an example of a little guy oppressed by the Evil Big Corporate Goliath, and the case is generating orders of magnitude more bad publicity for Waterstone's than they would have gotten from just ignoring him. SF writer Richard Morgan (who, incidentally, is one of my favorite authors) oversimplifies a little in his letter to Waterstone's, but in this part he gets it exactly right:

Waterstones is, after all, a bookseller, whose stock in trade is the purveying of opinion, not all of it palatable to those concerned. You sell books which offer serious critique of the corporate environment and government, but do not expect to suffer punitive action from government or corporate quarters as a result. You sell books which criticise and satirise religious and political groups, but you do not expect to be firebombed by extremists as a result. Surely Joe has the right to let off steam in his free time without having to fear for his livelihood as a result. The action that has been taken so far bears more resemblance to the behaviour of an American fast food chain than a company who deal in intellectual freedoms and the concerns of a pluralist liberal society.

In a word, Waterstone's can dish it out but can't take it.

I don't know whether Waterstone's has the legal right to fire Mr. Gordon in this case (and I do respect the right to free association as well as the right to free speech). I am not a lawyer. But I do know that they have overreacted appallingly and in about the least constructive and most self-damaging way imaginable. They have presented themselves as oversensitive, heavy-handed hypocrites, fully worthy of a Dilbert cartoon. Another SF author, Charles Stross, spells out the details of their folly here and also has some constructive suggestions for a resolution.

In the past, whenever I've gone to Dundee or Edinburgh I have invariably stopped at Waterstone's to buy a book or two (or three or four, etc.), or some coffee, or often both. But as long as they continue this absurd course with Mr. Gordon, I think I can attend to my reading and caffeine needs elsewhere. I encourage my British readers, and any overseas readers who come to Britain for a conference or a holiday, to do likewise. Try Ottakar's instead for books. I hope that Science Fiction authors will also refrain from any Waterstone's book signing affairs until there is a satisfactory resolution. And if you'd like to register an opinion with Waterstone's, you can reach them at manager@edinburgh-eastend.waterstones.co.uk. Judging from the picture in the Guardian article, this seems to be the branch where Mr. Gordon worked.
But even if not, I dare say your message will be forwarded to the relevant person.

We now return you to our regularly scheduled programming.

UPDATE (13 January): In response to my e-mail drawing the attention of the Waterstone's management to this post, I received the following from their Customer Services:

Dear James R. Davila,

Thank you for your email.
Unfortunately we cannot comment on this matter as it is confidential between the company and the employee.
I would like to thank you for taking the time to contact me, all comments are getting forwarded to the appropriate department.