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Reader Comments (78)

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 11:52AM (Unverified) said

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you know that this isnt a blog right?
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Posted: Oct 1st 2007 12:21PM Duke said

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"I personally believe that a company has no grounds to fire you if you are doing your job - everyone has a right to complain and if no names are named and it's done anonymously then there is no harm at all."

Yes, you believe that they had no grounds and there was no harm - they believed they had a reason and there was harm. Their belief would be the more informed one here.

She has no right to talk about her coworkers and bosses- it’s a job, for a corporation. Her needs to be a jerk do not outweigh their rights to run their company.

Once again, you may wish it were different and have feelings on the issue - but the law does not say you cannot fire someone. It’s at will employment, and they can then fire her at their own will. Unless you have a contract, you work under the same arrangement.
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Posted: Oct 1st 2007 11:53AM (Unverified) said

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What grabbed me is that, while she is kind of pretty, she's only 23, married AND has a three year old kid. Blogging about her job is the least of her troubles.

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 11:59AM (Unverified) said

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I dont understand what you're saying. What exactly is wrong with being 23, married, and having a kid?

O boy, here we go with age as verbal ammo for what she's done.
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Posted: Oct 1st 2007 12:30PM Duke said

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"Whether or not her actions showed disloyalty (What world do you live in?) to the group or company etc is irrelevant as long as she did her job and was civil to the people she worked with."

First off, its a subjective eye that judges diloyalty - and you don't work there, so how could you second guess them?

Second, whether you think its relevant does not matter - a boss in the US can walk into work mad over traffic and fire the whole company. Thats the system.

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 12:54PM (Unverified) said

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Well then let me say it...
FUCK YOU Nintendo. Now I will never buy your crappy wii.

I know Nintendo fanboys they don't need my sale...still. That is ridiculous.

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 12:59PM Duke said

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A lot of passion for them firing someone you don't know. Just looking for a reason to be mad at Nintendo and their products? I would bet a lot of other companies whose products you buy have done this too. (For a lot for reasons even less compelling to the viewer.)
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Posted: Oct 1st 2007 12:56PM (Unverified) said

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@psyclerk

You are a douche...how do you know that is the least of her troubles? She may very well be living a somewhat happy life with her family...maybe they are the only things keeping her sane. Way to stereotype.

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 1:05PM (Unverified) said

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Microsoft encourages (responsbile) blogging, since they have a whole section of MSDN for it.

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 1:55PM (Unverified) said

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Doesn't matter what the subject matter was - she could have been blogging about Mother Theresa and Jarred the Subway Sandwich guy for all I care. The point is that your employer expects you to spend your time productively and not waste company resources (i.e.- your computer and internet access) on activities not related to your employment.

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 3:07PM Crono141 said

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That would be valid if she were blogging from work, on company time, and it was against policy to do so. If she did her blogging from home, there is some kind of a case here for legal action. At Will work doesn't mean they can fire you for nothing whenever. A company does not (or should not) have the right to terminate your employment because of what you do when you're not at work. I think there could be a legal case here to establish that precedent. Somewhere along the lines of right to privacy (her public blog written on private time), with a bit of free speech issue thrown in there.
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Posted: Oct 1st 2007 1:56PM (Unverified) said

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Since when is someone getting fired for talking shit about their boss news?

Is this why the best slogan the Seattle Stranger can claim is "Seattle's Only Newspaper"?

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 4:02PM (Unverified) said

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(to NATO-Duke and playwhutyalike)

Eh, ya. Just had a 'round table' debate over lunch. And I'm clearly no expert in law (and don't plan to be), but I understand that 'at will' deal is in my state too.

Just my overly hyperactive nerve shooting off at the mouth again. But I do wonder this though. If private companies aren't bound by the constitution, then why do they have to honor the whole 'no racism/sexism within the company' policies that are every where?

Or is this sort of like one of those deals.. oh. Try to think of an example. I dunno, like how the recording industry rates its own movies/music in an effort to keep the government from feeling it has to do the job. Something like that, self regulating.

-BF

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 5:00PM Duke said

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Well, con law is a confusing study for sure, so I understand why you ask that. Basically, the consitution says that the gov cannot infringe on your rights based on racism. The there are statutes which tell companies and persons that thet cannot do things for the sake of race.

Section 1983 of the Civil Rights Act allows people to sue over federally protected rights, like the 1st and 14th Amendments-but only regarding public sector discrimination (not private).

Now in the private sector there are laws outside the constitution to look at, like the Equal Pay Act which makes employers pay men and women the same wage. The biggie though is the 1964 civil rights act (different one then above) that disallows employment discrimination across the board.

So more or less, congress forms laws to make the private companies act in one way or another. Yet the consitution does not protect people in the private sector against the private sector - there has to be gov involvement for that to work
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Posted: Oct 1st 2007 3:37PM Arkv2 said

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Oh :O, just as they banned me for swearing lol

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 3:39PM howmuchIcarrot said

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can anyone tell me what the hell a "technical recruiter" does?!

oh and thanks for pointing out she's "good looking". That's really relevant to what happened.

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 4:27PM (Unverified) said

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no wonder Beth quit...

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 4:41PM (Unverified) said

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"oh and thanks for pointing out she's "good looking". That's really relevant to what happened."

It goes a long way toward explaining the whole "23-years-old, married with a 3-year-old child" situation.

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 4:54PM (Unverified) said

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1. Not hot. She's a decent writer though. It's easy to stereotype her based on how she looks, her age, and just her attitude in general, but her writing, even in her blog, is pretty eloquent and coherent... and also bitchy.

2. "Maybe the boss/Nintendo should learnt to take criticism?" - there is a difference between constructive criticism and claims that her boss is frumpy, hormonal and has excessive facial. Those are petty insults, and there is no reason to stand for that.

3.BlueOcean- Companies cannot discriminate on the basis of sex or race because the practice of such discrimination was outlawed in 1964 as part of the Civil Rights Act.
The First Amendment essentially states that no person shall be barred from speaking freely, but no one is preventing Zenner from saying what she wants to. She's just getting fired for it. The First Amendment certainly allows you to say whatever the hell you please, but it never says that there won't be consequences to your actions.

Private companies are bound by the Constitution in the same way that everybody else is. But, until someone outlaws "discrimination on the basis of being a bitch", they can fire people for cases such as this.

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 4:56PM (Unverified) said

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I replied to BlueOceanTao but it didn't come up, we will see if this post comes up. Anyway.

We don't know what it's like to work with Nintendo or this blogger here. She probably was a real pain in the ass to work with. I can imagine her running around the joint thinking the company owes her the world because she got knocked up at 19 and her husband is in Iraq "protecting our freedom". Maybe not. If she truly liked, loved, or was able to stand her job, she wouldn't have put herself in a situation to get fired. If she was an outstanding employee, they would have overlooked her lame ass blog entries and kept her on. But, she just gave them the fuel to get rid of her worthless ass, so now she has no choice but to move on.

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 5:06PM (Unverified) said

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Crono: "Somewhere along the lines of right to privacy (her public blog written on private time), with a bit of free speech issue thrown in there."

She wrote it on the internet. On the internet!

The internet is the farthest place from private possible. There is no other place that you can put something where more people will have global, relatively unrestricted access to it.

If she wanted a private diary, she should've bought a pen and a little notebook and kept it at home, in a drawer, some place private. Not on the internet.

Also, free speech has nothing to do with it. She is not being discriminated against in any way that we can see from the story given to us. She has shown her employers what he attitude about her coworkers and management is, and if her attitude is a detriment to morale, productivity, etc, then they have good reason to fire her.
If she were a model employee, I'm sure they would have weighed the benefits of keeping her against her comments, but, obviously, she wasn't worth keeping. It is as simple as that.

You have a right to free speech. But you do not have a right to a job. Nor do you have the right to say whatever you want without consequence.

Nor do you have the right to privacy in the one of the most public forums possible, the blogosphere!

Lastly, I am pretty sure that the concept of "private time" carries absolutely no legal merit. At least I hope it doesn't.

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 5:17PM medeasin said

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If you write about your boss being a fat, frumpy, alcoholic, you are probably going to get fired when they read it. Doesn't matter where you work.

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 6:47PM (Unverified) said

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Not.Very.Professional
Not.Very.Bright.

You..fired!

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 8:54PM (Unverified) said

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Unfortionatly I don't know enough to judge her either way. There have always been sites on the internet were people bitch about there jobs in an entertaining way slightly embelished to be funny as a stress release thing. I have always suspected that was the origin of many sites like BOFH or I cant remember for the life of me one by a guy that ran a game store that was hilarious( I realize this is a Blog so not quite the same thing).

But I also don't know if she worked on this or visted this at work or shared it with co workers. But if she did and it came back to the manager or other employees it could create a uncomfortable work environment and might classify as harasment forcing Nintendo to take action. Now at the same time if this was a totally private thing outside of work and they did nothing to get it noticed I could see it being none of their buisness.

Posted: Oct 1st 2007 10:37PM (Unverified) said

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Actually, there is indeed a potential Constitutional angle to this case. "At will" employment is a product of state law, requiring employers to still abide by all Federal and State regulations when dismissing an employee (you can't fire someone for being pregnant, for example, in most states, if not all). In this case, it may be possible to argue that Nintendo's application of "at will" employment may have interfered with her guaranteed right to free speech. This depends on whether she was blogging from work, of course, and whether the posting of her picture on her sight effectively rendered any "anonymous blogger" shield worthless, exposing her to legal action from Nintendo (libel, slander is speech). It's hard to say without knowing how Nintendo found out about her blogging at all.

Posted: Oct 2nd 2007 1:01AM (Unverified) said

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she'll be a fine stripper - work that ass like you worked that mouth

Posted: Oct 3rd 2007 12:59AM (Unverified) said

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Blogger & Former Nintendo Employee "Jessica Carr" Joins Ripten.com

The now infamous blogger and former Nintendo employee Jessica Zenner (alias Jessica Carr) will be joining the staff here at Ripten.com.

"Jessica, who was terminated by Nintendo of America due to her personal blog, inexcusablebehavior.spaces.live.com, will be writing about whatever the heck she wants here at Ripten, and while we understand that some of you may not like what she has to say, we have a hunch you will read it anyway."

Posted: Oct 3rd 2007 1:50AM (Unverified) said

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I think that it's about time something good happened to this girl. I'm happy to see her writing for ripten;She can finally put all the haters in their place.Someone said on another forum that we have finally found the real "Princess" in gaming. I think that's accurate.

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