It Really Is Appalling

It's gone very quiet here since New Year. Is anyone still reading, or have I managed to vanish silently up my own appendix?

Anyway. Not that I want to sound like Disgusted of Bedminster, but reading this story (linked to from Neil Gaiman's Journal) has made me really cross. OK, so this is only one person's version of events (and there are certainly things to be said about the advisability or otherwise of referring to one's employer directly in a blog, which is why I always use the thinly-veiled alias of "St Brad's" for my place of work) but even so, for God's sake.

If Mr Gordon had been giving away company secrets, or entreating his readers to boycott Waterstones, then that might have been justifiable grounds for disciplinary action. All he seems to have been doing, though, is using his blog to moan about the occasional stresses of working for an employer for whom (according not only to himself but also Neil Gaiman, Richard Morgan and Charlie Stross) he was an assiduous worker, an excellent author liaison and a popular public face.

The whole thing reeks of internal management politics, but the fact that the cultural climate is such that Waterstones felt justified in picking on an employee's out-of-hours writings as its excuse for sacking him is pretty bloody sickening, frankly.

(Still, at least I've discovered Ken Macleod's blog through reading Mr Gordon's page. Surprisingly, it seems to be mostly about left-wing politics.)


[Edit 12/1/5: The story's been picked up in the national newspapers now -- The Times, The Scotsman and The Guardian. The Guardian's article in particular does a magnificent job of making Waterstone's look really really bad.]