Waterstone's is a huge British bookstore chain. A employee of a Waterstone's in Scotland was recently fired from the store he'd worked in for eleven years for blogging satirical remarks about his workplace.
Anyone who has been a regular reader of the Gazette will know that I do occasionally mention my work life, although it accounts for a fraction of my written output. Like many folk I am not always happy at work (I have good days too, I don't go in miserable all the time as I'm sure former colleagues would attest if they could) and me being me when I mention bad days or annoying occurrences I do so in my own satirical, sarcastic, comedic style. I often put many things into a basic narrative form, add characters etc. So I would coin terms such as 'Bastardstone's' and have a character called 'Evil Boss' (my equivalent to Dilbert's Pointy Haired Boss – in fact I compared head office directives to being in a Dilbert cartoon). I once referred to a chum and former colleague, Olly, when he found a full time IT job after his graduation as being a successful member of the Escape Committee at work. This was brought up at my hearing yesterday. My protest that this was (to me a bloody obvious) spoof on the Great Escape didn't seem to cut any ice. This will give you an idea of what I faced.
