The latest in a string of reminders that Facebook and full-time employment rarely go hand in hand: Kaitlyn Walls, a 27-year-old Texas mother with an aversion to social media privacy settings, was summarily fired from her new daycare job before she even started. Why? Because she’d posted about hating working in daycare. Probably would’ve been a good idea to put that factoid on the résumé.
But, man, it’s hard not to feel a bit bad for Walls, who joins the illustrious ranks of the teen fired from a pizza place for a vulgar tweet, the woman let go from Chili’s for blasting cops on Facebook, and the woman canned by Cold Stone Creamery for online threats against President Obama. All she wrote was: “I start my new job today, but I absolutely hate working at day care.” And: “Lol, it’s all good, I just really hate being around a lot of kids.”
Typical venting! Just, you know, in public, in the suburbs, where I guess child-hating is frowned upon? Anyway, a local yard sale Facebook group got hold of her comments, and before you could say, “I heard that new Jon Ronson book about online shaming is pretty good,” assorted angry moms were calling Walls a “dumb bitch” or worse, and her bosses called to say she shouldn’t bother coming in to do the horrible job for which she’d been hired.
Even after all that, Walls continued to post on her Facebook page, lamenting her “own stupidity” and stressing out over her TV interview, which she evidently wasn’t aware she could decline.
Lesson … not learned? Doesn’t matter. Soon getting fired for something you put on social media will be so common that the news won’t cover it. You know, like sexual harassment.
