It's so funny how much Facebook truly has its grip on people. I've made a specific point to NOT make a Facebook friend of anyone I work with. There are many reasons for this...and here they are:
1. Facebook, for me, is truly for my friends and my family. I am someone who holds a pretty tight rein on the group of people I feel close enough to expose my posts to. And my posts are soooo benign. Borrrring. They hold any real significance to those with whom I've known forever or with whom I'm presently close. I don't get 'close' with everyone, so that list is pretty small.
2. The last thing on earth I want to do after pounding my feet around for 10 miles a day helping patients and doing my job is, the second I walk in the door, fire up Facebook and post about how shitty my job is. The thing is, I really love my job. Usually, when something goes south at work, I'll comment about it in a fairly anonymous fashion, even though my co-workers aren't my Facebook friends. I don't want to have to explain my facility or my colleagues to my real friends and family and I definitely don't want them (co-workers) in my personal business. At least five of them have asked several times if I'm on Facebook, and I always tell them yes. And they always tell me they look for me and they can't find me. Lucky me. I leave it at that.
3. I graduated from high school 20 years ago. That was a really small world full of superficial, unimportant bullshit. NEWSFLASH: the x-ray industry is even smaller and can turn into high school like that. We are all less than 3 degrees of separation. We all know someone who knows us or the person we're talking to. I have some friends from college and some friends from my internship facility on my Facebook. That's as close as I'm willing to get, and even THAT is too close.
A couple of weeks ago, there was a SCANDAL!!!! at work. It was based on Facebook. It still lingers. It makes me wonder if what I'm writing right now puts me in that category, even though I'm not divulging the details. I guess it could really be ANY company. Sometimes the wrong people write the wrong things that are then seen by others. Some might call it free speech. Some might call it stupidity.
See, free speech should be limited to those with enough intellect to speak something of value. And 'speaking' these days includes Facebook. People need to put the brakes on just how much they put 'out there'. Facebook is a public forum, and there are some truly insufferable folks who thrive on hovering over other people's lives via Facebook.
I am thankfully not at all affected by the recent events at my facility. I make a point to be sure that there would never be a reason for something like this to happen to me, and I don't even have co-workers as Facebook 'friends' (loose term there, friends). Some people love the drama, love the bitching, love the dilemmas, love being in the middle of it all. My reality is that once I'm out the door, that facility is sooooo in my rearview mirror, as far as co-workers go. Some of the cases are a different story, but those are always spoken about in very vague descriptions.
Facebook. Ryan's really close to closing his account, because it is truly meaningless to him. I quite like mine, because I use it to bitch or brag about things I normally would with my REAL friends and people who actually know me outside of the facility.
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