By: Elaine Quayle
What was he thinking? When a fashion house CFO vented, blogged, and tweeted his workplace frustrations on his social media outlets, he forgot that more than his friends could read them!
According to The Wall Street Journal and other media reports, Gene Morphis, chief financial officer of Francesca’s Holdings, used his blog, “Morph’s View,” and his Facebook and Twitter accounts to make some comments about company business and personnel that might be better left unposted.
The wsj.com article says Morphis had tweeted “Dinner with board tonight. Used to be fun. Now must be on guard every second,” and facebooked “Earnings released. Conference call completed. How do you like me now Mr. Shorty?”
These postings may have been ill-advised. But when he posted after an initial public offering, “Sold $275 million of secondary shares. Earned my pay this week,” it triggered an internal investigation by outside counsel for the publicly held company. Morphis was then fired for cause, with the company issuing a statement that Morphis had “improperly communicated company information through social media.”
Looks like social media caused this CFO to morph from the runway to the unemployment line.
You hear so much about how Millennials don’t consider how their social media activities come off to potential employers, but it’s not just the young’uns who make stupid social media mistakes.