Boss sends me a Facebook request.... NO!

[GeoGiant]

I shouldn't even say my boss, the president of the company I work for sent me a Facebook request and I responded by deleting my account... I guess I'll find out the repercussions of my action sometime soon.

I'm livid about this situation. I'm not friends with this guy, we don't get together socially and we don't have similar interests. I feel like this guy just trampled into my personal space. Trying to explain the obvious, like I prefer to keep FB for close friends and family, is not an option.

Not sure how others feel about this but I'm disgusted.

[Evil Dave]

Nobody I currently work with has access to my Facebook page. It's mine, old colleges, friends and family only. The problem is that I am also self employed as a personal trainer, a very personal profession and Facebook is a good communication tool For this I have an other Facebook site, and I keep them both active. Once I explain this to new clients, for those who ask, they don't seem to have any issue with it.

Don't be rude to your boss, but you should be able to send him a note or talk with him telling him that your Facebook is for personal use, not company use.

[GeoGiant]

Dave - My boss is the owner of the company. This is a man i might see every couple weeks at best. He's very successful and very eccentric (to put in nicely). He's not the kind of person who would ever consider someone's feelings. Telling him FB is not for company use would be like a slap in the face to him. As it stands now i intend to tell him I kept getting spammed so I deleted my account.

[Patrick]

I'm a bit confused by the hostile response to a simple request. It seems harsh. That leads me to think that maybe there is more to the story than you can say on these forums, which is fair. Bottom line, you should accept who you feel comfortable accepting.

When you receive a friend request on Facebook, you can confirm it or ignore it. I ignore way more than I accept, even from people who I have talked with before. I don't really get mad at them for requesting and don't really give it a second thought.

Now, I can understand an increased sensitivity with a boss, but in normal situations, he or she would understand a simple explanation or perhaps not even ask about it at all. You said you see this person every couple of weeks (at best). Not everyday. How likely is he to even bring it up at all if you simply click ignore instead of deleting your account? After all, he doesn't receive a notification from Facebook saying "GeoGiant ignored your request." It happens silently.

To me, it just seems like deleting your account was overkill and does more harm than good because now you miss out on any good interaction you had on Facebook (assuming you did). Beyond ignoring, accepting and deleting your account, there is also a middle option, which is to accept him, but restrict his access.

Facebook's privacy controls are really pretty good. A simple thing to do is accept him and immediately add him to your restricted list. This means that he won't see anything that isn't public already (i.e. that anyone can see without being your friend). I'm not saying you should do this, but I know some people that do.

While I can understand that telling your boss that Facebook is not for company use would be a weird thing to say - telling him your personal Facebook page is for your personal life only would not be, to most reasonable people. But, again, there may be more to this and there are certainly bosses who take too great of liberties. Hopefully it's not as bad as your posts sound.

Best of luck.

Patrick

[Evil Dave]

Deleting your account does not work in the long run. Patrick has already gone through some of the negative points. Your boss will find your new account, it may take a while, but it is bound to happen. One thing that has worked for a couple of other people that I know is that they let the person in and use FB's security settings to restrict their movement as Patrick mentioned. Then after a couple of weeks, and your sure that they have taken a look around, you unfriend them. Generally, but not always, once they know you are a friend, they move on. As they generally have to many FB friends to track them all. In a year or so down the road your boss may actually discover you dropped him from FB. When he asks why, you tell them that you cleaned up all your 'Friends' that you had no interaction with and that he wasn't alone. Good luck with this.

[GeoGiant]

Maybe some presidents / COEs / supervisors forget that their subordinates don't have the same ability to express their thoughts and opinions as they do.

I laugh at his jokes, I don't correct him when he's wrong, and I don't pass judgement he does something that is inappropriate but when I'm off work and dealing with my close friends and family and don't my boss overseeing my interaction.

[Patrick]

I don't think anyone is disagreeing with your desire, GeoGiant. But, everyone is different. And while you should feel freer to say certain things amongst certain groups, like closer friends, you should be careful with what you say on Facebook because your privacy is only as strong as the one person who decides what you said needs to be told to another person. It just takes one and it happens a lot.

Patrick

[yamesu]

I have the same opinion.

My social networks are for personal and social use only, no one from work has any access to my accounts.

I work for the Government and so probity is of an upmost concern. My name is known by others in the industry, and I do not want them to have access to the nuiances of my social life.

I find it imperative to keep life inside and outside of work completely seperate for professional reasons.

My solution:

I do not use my real full name on FB or any other social internet media. I also use the highest levels of security available.

People who know me outside of work know how to find me, and if they dont, Ill tell them.

When people from work ask me, I tell them I do not add/friend work collegues, as I find it unprofessional. It usually stops the conversation there and then.

This allows me to maintain a completely professional image at work and through professional networks - and if people google my real full name only conference, academia and other work related topics come up. If people search FB for me real full name, I am non-existant.

A little over the top?... Maybe, but in a workld where people can be fired for content on social media, I think its justified.

[DWx]

You know you can sort your Facebook contacts into groups and restrict who can see what. Then you don't offend anybody by refusing their request and you can still network with them via Facebook. I mean I don't want my parents seeing what I get up to on a Saturday night, likewise some of the kids from training who add me, I don't want them seeing most of what I post, but there are times when I might want to share something with them.

And instead of changing your name, you can also set it so that people can't find you to send you a request or see your content without being friends first. But tbh I always go with the policy that if I don't want something about me being known, I don't put it on Facebook (or similar sites) at all anyway. You can lock down your security settings as much as you want but once you put something on the web, you've got limited control over who shares stuff.

[SimonAsh86]

I tend to avoid having anyone i work with on my facebook friends list. Reason is if your ever having a moan about your job an lets face it...it happens. No one is in a position to go an get those comments back to your boss.

I know someone who actually got fired because of facebook comments, so yeah i avoid the situation as best i can.