小心老闆瀏覽你的私人信息
My mom always used to caution me to never put in writing something I didn't want the world to see. That was back when an electric typewriter seemed high-tech. Now in the age of Facebook and Twitter when our every thought, no matter how banal, can be shot across the world in a matter of seconds, nothing could hold more true than that old adage from mom especially when it comes to the workplace.
我母親過去常常提醒我，永遠不要把自己不想讓別人看到的東西寫下來。在那個年代，電傳打字機看起來就已經很高科技了。如今在這個Facebook和 Twitter的時代，人們的每一個想法──無論多麼平淡無奇──都能在瞬間傳到世界各個角落，我母親的忠告真是再正確不過了，特別是對有關工作的討論。
We all know that just about anything we post online is fair game for employers to check out, as we've posted about before. These days our every keystroke from instant messages to emails can be monitored by our employers who issue us computers and phones. But a new case, as I write about in today's paper, takes things a step further: Two restaurant workers were fired after they created an invite-only MySpace forum to dish about their workplace and their bosses, on their personal computers. Users could log in only with their own email addresses and passwords. They were busted when a supervisor talked a worker into giving him her password and perused the site.
我們都知道，我們在網上發的任何東西都有可能被老闆看到，這一點我們以前曾經討論過。現在，我們在即時信息或電子郵件中敲出的每個字都可能受到老闆的監視，正是他們給我們發了電腦和電話。不過正如我最近寫的一個新例子，事情還不止這樣：兩名餐館工人用自己的個人電腦在MySpace上創建了一個受邀才能加入的論壇，發泄對工作和老闆們的不滿，他們因爲這事被開除了。加入他們論壇的人必須用自己的電子郵件地址和密碼才能登錄。一名工頭說服一個工人把自己的密碼給了他，之後工頭瀏覽了論壇，那兩名工人就倒了黴。
Monitoring our comments behind the wall of an invite-only, password-protected site might seem like a bit of a reach. After all, should we be expected to hand over to our manager the passwords to our personal email accounts where we gripe to our friends about work? Or maybe we should know better. Some lawyers I spoke with said Internet users should be savvy enough to know that passwords don't always provide the security we expect and some company policies hold workers to high standards when it comes to shoptalk.
監視我們在受邀才能加入、有密碼保護的網站上發表的評論看似有點過分。畢竟，我們應該把個人電子郵件帳戶的密碼交給經理嗎？我們可是在上面向朋友大吐工作上的苦水。或許我們有更多的瞭解。和我聊過的一些律師說，互聯網用戶應該有足夠精明，明白密碼並不總能提供我們想要的安全保障，一些公司的制度還對員工在工作相關討論上提出了很高的標準。
As we often discuss, a big part of the juggle is finding the balance between our work and our private lives, but the dividing line can be hazy sometimes. What's more, we all feel the need sometimes to vent about our workplaces, but it's tough to know in this day and age what is acceptable banter and what isn't. Readers, do you think employees should be held accountable for online leaks of their private discussions about work? Do you think employers are overstepping their bounds?
正如我們常常討論的一樣，這個專欄很大程度上是要找到工作和生活之間的平衡，不過這條分界線有時可能很模糊。此外，我們都覺得有時需要發泄工作中的不滿，不過現如今很難說哪些玩笑是可以接受的，哪些是無法接受的。讀者朋友們，你認爲員工應該爲有關工作的私人聊天遭泄露負責嗎？你認爲老闆是否越界了？
