Defending the Company (Even Anonymously) Can Get You Sacked

American Airlines fired an employee for defending its culture and Web site to a critic.

An American Airlines Web developer who defended and explained his company’s culture — anonymously — to a critical Web designer over e-mail in May was fired by the company, said Kris Dunn on the HR Capitalist blog. It’s a cautionary tale on what can happen when an innocently written, carefully crafted employee perspective gets into the wrong hands.

In the age of instant communication and social media, assume everything is public, wrote Dunn.

Calling himself “Mr. X,” the now-former AA employee responded to Dustin Curtis, a Santa Rosa, CA, Web designer who wrote American Airlines with suggestions for improving the design of the AA.com Web site. The response was cordial, respectful of Curtis’ opinion, and seemed to be answering in the vein of “the customer is always right.”

But American Airlines Human Resources (HR) folks were unimpressed with his public discourse about the inner workings and corporate culture and fired Mr. X.

(Image by caribb via Flickr CC 3.0)

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