Facebook in the office

Much depends on the relationship you have with your boss.

At my previous shop, there would be no way in Hell I'd accept a friend request from the CEO or publisher. Granted, the likelihood they'd be on Facebook to begin with was zero, but still.

Having said that, I friended many of my employees and interns had many employees and interns friend me. Of course, the likelihood I'd really care what people did on Facebook was about as slim as the likelihood I'd friend my bosses.

I generally only friend people whom I know, so I'm sure that plays into it, but the short answer is this: If you don't feel comfortable with your boss friending you on Facebook, don't accept the friend request. If you feel obliged to friend him, set up your privacy settings so that he only sees the barebones basics if you feel he's doing it to spy on you.

 

I agree with this wholeheartedly as well. I should've done that in the first place, but, as Cadet said, I'm too far into the game to look back.

 

I defriended everyone at work except those who don't directly work with me after I was told that someone I did work with was telling higher-ups that I was posting unkind things about my job. Never mind that the higher-ups were both friends and would have seen such things. But I determined it wasn't worth the headache.

 

So how would this work? Would you use two different names? What if your friends try to friend you on your work account, or the other way around? It's the one thing that's keeping me off facebook, trying to separate all these people.

 

I've been using facebook some to double-check the spelling of kids' names in roundups. If there's a weird spelling, I'll check to see if the kid has a facebook page to check the spelling. Obviously I don't try to be the kid's friend, but it's a helpful tool to double-check spellings. The kid created the page, so the spelling has to be right.

 

Oh yeah, I need my family seeing everything. 'Darling, you have such wonderful friends on Facebook, why do they keep asking about Lou?'