How much prying into your private life is an employer entitled to do in the name of protecting their reputation? How far can they go before you tell them to mind their own business?Some employers routinely monitor their workers' drinking, smoking and drug use, check their criminal records, vet their emails and favoured websites, or ban controversial activities like political protests. Is all this personal surveillance really justified?
I suspect a lot of this nosiness is just a way of showing who's boss and has little to with the firm's reputation.
I shouldn't think their customers care a jot who has a cocaine habit or who wants to smash capitalism as long as they do their job properly.
But this very week a teacher in Cambridge was reprimanded by her Principal for posing in her underwear on a website. She had jeopardised the school's reputation, he said, and acted inappropriately. He ordered the immediate removal of the photos from the website and was consulting his superiors about further action.
Do the pupils or parents really think these risqué photos have affected her teaching? I doubt it. More likely, they were just intrigued and amused.
Of course some personal monitoring is necessary. Making sure that anyone working with children has no history of child abuse is important. Likewise ensuring that pilots aren't drunk in the cockpit. But beyond these basic safeguards, your private life should be your concern and nobody else's.
Objecting to employees who wear crosses, wear earrings, sport tattoos, or dye their hair a strange colour, is ridiculous. All those sartorially-correct bankers still managed to screw up the economy big-time. Maybe a few purple-haired, multi-pierced ones would have done a better job?
If you ask me, the people who really deserve close scrutiny are not ordinary employees but all those sneaky politicians busy lining their pockets at our expense. As far as they're concerned, the more prying the better.
Question: Would it be equally "inappropriate" if the teacher had posted her holiday snaps, lying on the beach in her bikini? Would it be inappropriate that a pupil might have seen her semi-naked on the sand? Someone's seriously over-reacting here.
