Sacked Waterstone's blogger offered job back

Joe Gordon, the man sacked by Waterstone's - after the bookseller discovered the contents of his blog referred to 'Bastardstone's' and 'Evil Boss' - has been offered his job back.

The Scots blogger, who worked for the firm for 11 years before his dismissal, has rejected the offer in favour of a new position at sci-fi merchandise shop Forbidden Planet International.

Gordon told silicon.com at the time he was "gobsmacked" to hear of his dismissal and described the action of his bosses as "heavy-handed". He added that should his bosses have asked him to stop discussing his place of employment in his blog, he would have done so. Instead, they chose to fire him.

Gordon appealed against his dismissal. His appeal was upheld and Waterstone's offered the blogger his job back.

According to a posting by Gordon on his blog, The Woolamaloo Gazette: "I was offered reinstatement but by this time I had been offered a new post with Forbidden Planet... To be fair, Waterstone's got together quite freely with Paul, my stalwart union rep, to work out an equitable and amicable deal in place of reinstatement and so, after a long haul these events have now come to a quite civilised end."

Gordon told silicon.com he is "glad it was all over" and he is "very happy with my new post which is allowing me to select and promote good writing... and love doing the company blog - great way for a company to keep in touch and share with their customers in an accessible and open manner".

Paul Lee, national officer at Gordon's trade union, the Retail Book Association, said that despite Waterstone's initial reaction to the blog, the situation had now been resolved to the union's satisfaction.

"It is good to see [that] common sense prevailed and pleasing to report our representations were well heard and acted upon," he said in a statement. "Things may have been different, however, if commentary such as this was truly in the public domain, rather than in a hard-to-find blogsite," he added.

Unlike the situation at Gordon's old job, his new employer has encouraged Gordon to continue blogging and he now runs Forbidden Planet's blog.

Blogging about workplaces has become a dangerous subject for some employees, with an air hostess, a political worker and a Google employee all having found themselves on the wrong end of a P45.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation recently published a guide for those blogging about their workplaces on how to avoid the sack.