Borders Non-Blogging Contract
Borders employees are claiming that they are being pressured into signing a non-blogging contract that essentially puts a gag on any writing about new policies and procedures implemented by the distressed book chain. Here’s what one employee said.
Borders is now trying to get the employees to sign a non-blogging contract, and several employees have been fired or put on probation for writing and producing videos in response to the “make books” controversy.
It’s unclear whether this is simply a repurposed version of the current non-disclosure statement from the employee handbook or if it is something new and specifically targeted at online and blog activity.
This blog, specifically the Borders Books Employees Are Angry! post, has been a forum for current and former Borders employees to vent. Their experiences provide powerful glimpses into a changing corporate culture and a company flailing amid economic turmoil.
I haven’t been able to obtain a copy of the non-blogging contract. Yet it seems clear that something has been communicated throughout the organization that blogging about new policies is going to get you in hot water. While a typical non-disclosure agreement makes sense, I wonder how a non-blogging policy would work.
If I have a Facebook page and my profile says I’m a Borders employee, have I violated that contract if my update says I’m having a bad day at work? Do comments on a blog (like this one) count? Has an employee transgressed if their personal blog contains a poor review of a ‘make book’?
Is Borders also seeking out those employees who think the new programs and policies are great? If you don’t want people blogging about things, then wouldn’t that apply to both the bad and the good?
Even the hint of a non-blogging contract seems antithetical to today’s business environment. In a time when more companies are embracing new methods of communication, Borders seems to be going in reverse. Instead of making their employees evangelists for their brand, they’re frightening them into being drones.
Imagine if Borders employees were encouraged to write about the great books just arriving. The hidden gems, the stuff they’ve just read. Tweets about upcoming readings. There are so many ways you could make this work.
There is but one prerequisite, investing and empowering your employees. Based on the experiences of those commenting on this blog, Borders has done the opposite. So, instead of hearing about the excitement around Margaret Atwood’s newest novel, we’re hearing about corporate censorship.
What’s your opinion on a non-blogging contract?
July 27th, 2009 at 12:56 pm
How in the world do you monitor something like this? Seems next to impossible to know that someone is blogging about something if they use an alias which most people do (especially if it’s also done on their own time) … unless of course you take a Big Brother approach
July 27th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Wow, this certainly represents a change in management style at Borders. 11 years ago, several friends worked for the company and raved about how mgmt. encouraged and helped them be spokespeople for the brand. It was an energetic, positive culture and this, if true and widespread, is a sad reversal.
July 27th, 2009 at 12:58 pm
that who free speech thing is a fad, no one will miss it once it’s outlawed.
July 27th, 2009 at 1:02 pm
If the employees are prohibited only from blogging about company policy and procedures, that seems fair. It might be a security or confidentiality issue, and isn’t unlike telling an employee they can’t discuss work related things with outside parties.
July 27th, 2009 at 1:03 pm
The best way to prevent bad blogs and tus bad publicity is to come up with a healthy happy work place. If the majority of employees are happy one or two malcontents will be ignored. Maybe Borders should look into the environment that leads to unhappy employees.
July 27th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
If the discussion revolves around corporate blogging it is prudent to keep content in line with the mission statement of the corporation or in my library’s case, the organization. I find folks get excited and want to share what is important to them on a personal level on the library blogs. To date, WDFPL blog content has remained relevant to library materials and services from both a patron perspective and that of a new librarian.
If a public forum is the mission of Border’s blog, then Borders should welcome the commentary in my opinion.
July 27th, 2009 at 1:04 pm
wow, borders used to be such a cool place.
how the heck are they going to enforce such a ban?
i know i never use my real name online, so how would management even know which employee is blogging?
July 27th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
@yobo : if theyre intent on catching their borders rebel, IP addresses would be a start.
its true that many companies have confidentiality clauses re policies which shld not be blogged about. but maybe borders mgmt is going about this the wrong way. or we are just not hearing the whole story.
July 27th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
Like said above:
- A contract of keeping “company secrets” secret is no problem.
- A contract of keeping shut ’bout your work life is a problem (especially for the company).
July 27th, 2009 at 1:25 pm
There is no intent of attempting to monitor this. This is the kind of policy that is put in place to make it easy to fire employees that you have no actual reason to fire, “undesirables” for lack of a better term. The kind of employee who shows up on time, does their job professionally and competently, but for some unspecified reason management wants to fire. This sort of nebulous and vague policy makes it easy to weed out the non-conformists and the intelligent, those who won’t blindly accept policy.
I have been waiting for a company to use one of these “contracts” as a cause for termination and getting their ass sued off for wrongful termination. I don’t think these “contracts” will stand up to judicial scrutiny, especially when the kind of coercion and high pressure tactics that are used to get people to sign them is brought to light.
July 27th, 2009 at 1:27 pm
This is blatantly illegal and unenforceable and, if true, will mean I will certainly boycott Borders. No company owns my time-off, ever. I will blog/write abut anything I damn well please. I will pose as a Border’s employee (heck I might be a Borders employee, who knows?) Borders can suck it.
July 27th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
To what policies, exactly, are $8/hr. store clerks privy that Borders would want to keep under wraps? That returned merchandise is resellable even if the spine is broken? That the “fresh” scones are really a day old? That the leather chairs aren’t really leather?
Come on, Borders. People who read a lot often like to write a lot, and they’re often quite good at it. Ridding yourself of thousands of high-quality Borders-related blog posts is a dumb move, no matter how you look at it.
How, exactly, is Borders looking at it, again?
July 27th, 2009 at 1:31 pm
that is so not cool.
July 27th, 2009 at 1:41 pm
This is patently ridiculous. Now I want to get a job at Borders just so I can violate this contract.
Also, I would like to second the concept, “Borders can suck it.”
July 27th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
[…] Border’s Bloggers get the Brush. […]
July 27th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
Even though I haven’t worked for BGI for a number of years, I’ve followed their decline through the stories of friends who remained there and the LiveJournal “Iworkatborders” community. The average floor person (of which there are fewer because of shrinking payroll budgets) has no secret information regarding company policies, except maybe for the tidbit that if you make a big enough scene at the register, the manager will eventually give in to whatever demands you might have regarding discounts.
I think they mostly just don’t want someone looking for Borders online to stumble across the various “Working at Borders sucks” posts.
July 27th, 2009 at 2:20 pm
Man, this rumored policy is so lame. So many of us know what it feels like to have your social networking restricted, and my sense is that it’s far too late to stem that tide: employees will roll right around weird restrictive policies.
I wrote about this issue at my blog, at http://jennamcwilliams.blogspot.com/2009/07/rumor-has-it-that-borders-employees-are.html. I’d love for you to check it out!
July 27th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
I was once fired from a job for blogging about my company. One shouldn’t be surprised when a corporation tries to impose such draconian, anti-democratic rules. What is a surprise, though, is that these rules are coming from Borders, a bookseller, a company that has built its business on the idea of free speech. I’m sure they’d have a problem if the government stepped in and put restrictions on what books they can sell, but they don’t have a problem with silencing employees from publishing their thoughts and opinions.
July 27th, 2009 at 3:42 pm
It makes me want to find all the blog posts I made when I used to work at a borders express, and copy them into a standalone blog! I had nothing nice to say about it at the time.
July 27th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
This article is 100% true. I’ve seen the no blogging contract. Haven’t signed it, and haven’t been pressured to. Whether or not people are getting fired for not signing remains to be seen.
July 27th, 2009 at 6:30 pm
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July 27th, 2009 at 9:09 pm
What’s the make books controversy? I must have missed this one…!
July 28th, 2009 at 7:03 am
[…] news from the world of chain bookstores, with Borders employees reporting that they are being pressured into signing a non-blogging contract that puts a gag on any writing about new policies and […]
July 28th, 2009 at 10:44 am
[…] true, this is sad, distrubing and an ugly trend amongst the big box bookstores. There’s word that […]
July 28th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
[…] Borders Non-Blogging Contract […]
July 28th, 2009 at 8:22 pm
I can explain this. The contract prohibits blogging at work, using of the Borders’ logo in blogs and divulging company information via blogs, and requires blogging employees to comply with our Company Business Conduct Policy. All in all, it’s a pretty standard contract.
July 29th, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Quit working there a while back. Never felt less welcome to work somewhere. Operations are incredibly inefficient. Regional/Area management seemed completely detached from reality.
Probably the second worst place I ever worked. Haven’t walked into a Borders store in a long, long while.
July 29th, 2009 at 4:10 pm
Yes, I have signed the no-blogging contract. It says essentially what Susie above has mentioned. What she doesn’t say is that management makes every effort to give you the impression that what you’re signing prohibits any blogging about Borders AT ALL.
So why doesn’t the contract say that? I don’t know, but I imagine there is a limit to how much they can infringe on your first amendment rights.
And whoever posted that they are not attempting to enforce the contract is wrong. People have been fired over things they have written.
The contract came about BTW because somebody over on the Live Journal Iworkatborders blog posted an email sent from a district manager named Julio to his GMs (the email was a disgrace and very embarrassing to Borders). That, obviously, was an internal email, and I don’t know whether those are considered privileged information under the law.
July 29th, 2009 at 4:19 pm
Borders has been for some time a really, really terrible place to work. Having worked for borders during the great times when we actually were a serious bookstore for serious readers (and spenders) and the just insane, surreal, bizarre times like now where we are on credit hold with major publishers, employees are intimidated, sections are being moved around for no reason, etc, etc. Things are just ridiculously bad there. Note to Ron Marshall (CEO) just saying Borders is a serious bookstore doesn’t mean Borders is a serious bookstore. That ship sailed long ago and you my man have now sunk it.
August 4th, 2009 at 9:11 am
Well, whaddayaknow: Borders stole every last one of the morale building exercises used when Jerry Junkins ran Texas Instruments. (For those of you not familiar with Mr. Junkins’s story, he pulled the same exact series of stunts through the late Eighties and early Nineties, and died before he could drive the company into bankruptcy. The fact that Southern Methodist University named its technology school after Junkins makes locals in the Dallas area wonder when SMU is going to open the Madalyn Murray O’Hair Institute for Biblical Studies or the Jeffrey Dahmer Culinary School.) While I doubt that Borders will see a new incarnation of TI’s “Mad Shitter”, I am waiting for its employees to look at these new tattletale managers and start muttering “Let’s frag the lieutenant”.
August 15th, 2009 at 4:34 am
I can’t remember if I even signed one of those. At my store they ran up to you on the floor “Here sign this?” So here we are helping customers and stressed out so we would sign.
They are insane. They are treating their employee’s like criminals. Look you want to pay your employee’s a wage that even in the 70’s they could not live off..they are not paying a wage even someone in college can survive..then you will get what you paid for.
They are crazy. I never understand how certain employee’s can side with the managers. Yuck.
August 15th, 2009 at 10:28 am
Look anytime they force me to sign something they hardly look at your signature. I put Micky Mouse…classic. Don’t sign your name. I remember when I read what that DM Juilo sent to his GM”S on this site..I can see Border’s flipping out. They should have fired that guy. Don’t sign anything or let’s sign fake names. Or let them fire me, I would probably make more unemployed anyways.
August 20th, 2009 at 8:51 pm
[…] you are damn dumb. http://usedbooksblog.com/blog/borders-non-blogging-contract/http://slog.thestranger.com/slog/archives/2009/07/27/borders-against-blogging*****************A […]
September 12th, 2009 at 4:56 pm
There’s an awful lot of seeing the past through rose-colored glasses here. Everything said above about the New Borders is true. But, the Old Borders was a place where GMs and supervisors had absolute discretion to do and say as they pleased with employees they did not like. So out of control that only after continuous complaints would they — not reprimand or fire — but transfer a manager TO ANOTHER STORE. Wrong sex, wrong sexuality, wrong politics, wrong religion and it was a place as irrational and hostile and self-destructive as it is now. Remember, the company went through numerous reorganizations and a revolving door of presidents — none of which did anything to deal with problems that are structural to the book business (which has its own biases). Many of you are finding out what it was like for those of us in the only true minority at Borders. People knew how hard I worked and knew how I was being treated and looked the other way. I stood up for myself and I stood without sympathy from the caring crowd. Spare me your self pity. The corporate culture at Borders has always been harsh and mean spirited. Borders now has contempt for all its employees. The chickens have come home to roost for the enlightened ones. More to the point, this is a company that is in permanent decline and has been for over a decade. And simply won’t admit it. If not for the financial collapse, the stores would have closed a year ago. When the economy recovers, Borders will be sold or dismantled. Those are the choices. And who the hell would want Borders?
September 27th, 2009 at 3:22 am
Ok-i work at Borders, and have for 15 years! i got an “illness” and they SCREWED ME! My full time status was taken away (and given to someone who lasted a few MONTHS) as was my insurance, and i HAVE a brain tumor! i cannot get insurance now with anyone and frankly i don’t care who knows! i was YANKED! i have applied for another “postion” in the company/MY STORE-i had been the special orders clerk, and a damn fine one, and was told “you are not serious enough”-ok, i guess 15 years makes me a “cut-up”? Folks, i need this tumor gone! i can’t get insurance anywhere. i’m near 60 years old! i had done the “postion” i appled for a number of years ago, but the NEW REGIME has hamstrung me-i’m not YOUNG, CUTE, and a NON READER! Hello! How can you work in a bookstore and NOT READ? Why is YOUTH the be all end all? Ok-many of you young kids do read, and YES, i did “sign” the NO BORDERS BLOG PIECE OF CRAP! LIKE THE “NON-SERIOUS” PERSON I AM! OK LOYALTY DOES NOT BODE WELL UNDER MARSHALL (OR SHOULD I SAY STALIN OR A NEAR PERFECT HITLER?) Our store is now hiring new folks while cutting available staff hours to NIL! People who READ (OH GOD!) to people who are YOUNG CUTE AND IDIOTS! (like NO READING REQUIRED! SHALL WE BE STUPID? LETS” DANCE!) Seniority has gone out the door to STUPID! You want a viatribe? i work in a store that has NOTHING, ya wanna know how poor it is-i BUY THE BANDAIDS for the customers-oh, excuse me-”GUESTS”, i get the soap for the employees to wash their hands and i buy the “disinfectant gel” to clean their hands! Borders has BAILED big time! They hate us-the employees, the “wheels” got a raise and bonues this year, but we did not! How can they live with themselves? It’s like beating a dead dog! We are threatened with our jobs DAILY if we don’t sell “makes”, sign up BORDERS REWARDS and frankly someone is gonna PAY FOR MY TUMOR! i have lost TEETH to this company, no one returns my emails on insurance and this all is a JOKE! If i write a book-which is happening soon, the nation will KNOW what a wretched company this is to work for now! Age discrimintion is a biggie, seniority is PRIME, and threatening staff is OUTTA LINE! Maybe an expose is what we need! i am so tired of garbage- i have been there, TRIED and gotten NO WHERE! HOW CAN THIS BE TRUE-hell, it is!
Ok, like the company now, on Wallstreet, syas we are bankrupt-who, pray, did this MARSHALL! Selling books about cancer and war are NOT GOOD! Would it hurt to say…HELLO, what do you folks read, NOT what i can get “free money” for…your thousands of employees read (ok MOST) and maybe HALF of us can sell books because we enjoy READING! WE do have BRAINS! Trust us!
i work in a store that is URBAN-we do not have “high faluntin” ideas here-no one wants a DOWNER, we want GOOD-more “bang fer the buck” ya dig? EVERY STORE IS DIFFERENT! The neighborhood is DIFFERENT! WE aren’t WEALTHY, we areL LATINO, we are BLACK, we want what suits us-not some white lady whinin’ about CANCER! Be timely, know yer demographics HELLO! And quit shaftin’ yer employees! Go with your strengths! KNOW EACH store or MOVE THE HELL ON! Go live in yer fancy house and NOT CLEAN YOUR CIGAR STAINED TEETH because yer staff are idiots-ok, I NOTICED! Your &500.+ suit but bad teeth-CLEAN “EM! Ok guys i am angry and mad and I HATE the way you treat loyal staff-folks who give way over the top-regular folks, not MANAGEMENT, because frankly THEY ARE A JOKE! YOU ARE PROMOTING LAME PEOPLE! This company is doomed to fail, because ya want a tax right -off or something? Geez, ya blow! Ya hate us-the folks who work for you! We slave daily and ya couldn’t care less if we lived or died! You stink! i hate all of you because the place i strated at 15 years ago is GONE! You hate us, you hate the “guests” and don’t give a shit! jacki-15 year employee #81 and HANG ME BECAUSE I WILL SEE YOU IN HELL!
October 15th, 2009 at 6:15 am
I worked At A restuarant that had a strict no blogging policy. Our contract said we would not hAve a blog/website/myspace etc at all and doing so is grounds for termination.
I told the hiring manager there was no way I’d remove my websites and she said “off the record” to just not write anywhere on the website that I work at this establishment and that should keep me safe. Still, technically I was violating the contract all along.
January 27th, 2010 at 12:38 am
Have you come accross a copy of the non blogging contract yet. They have a link posted on bookmark if bookmark is available to you.