Would you accept your bosses Facebook "Friend" request?

NoH8

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You did the right thing. At least he accepted your explaination and was polite about your privacy.

Before I'd been on FB very long I had accepted friend requests from 2 colleagues and one supervisor. I liked them but they aren't privy to my personal life. Unfortunately now I have to keep everything on there very innocuous and impersonal. E.g. I couldn't use it for dating or searching for a new job.

The difficult part came when a senior manager who is very close to the top of my company requested to friend me. I felt intimidated because she has so much power over my career. I declined. One year later she sent another request, and I declined again.

She has used FB in the past to monitor other employees activities and actually counts the number of minutes during the day that they spend logged in. She also has publicly criticized these people for not working hard enough.

Now I regret having ANY colleagues as FB friends because FB is next to useless for me to talk to my real friends about sex, drugs, love, work, depression, etc. None of my family use computers. Yay! I love LPSG for the freedom and privacy I have, but my other friends are now partitioned off on FB.

Yuck! What a mess! I am meeting more and more colleagues who have shut down their FB accounts for these and other reasons. It's too stressful!

On the other hand, for those who want to network for clients it's possibly OK to start a business only account, but how fun would that be? :(
 

azladd

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No, I wouldn't accept it. Surely your boss would have to understand the reasons why it would not be wise to do so. Perhaps you can create a separate account for business purposes. However, your personal account that not only contains your private details, but also the details of others, I would not. Secondly, there could be a potential HR issue should your friendship head south.Not to mention, although FB has strong privacy setting, you dont want to run the risk of employees on his friends list mis interpreting activities that go on between you and your boss.
 

MrToolhung

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I really don't see any issue with accepting this friend request at all. Many of my "friends" are my employees and my managers. I just keep it simple and never post anything about work unless it is a shout out to them for doing a great job.
 

EllieP

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I accepted every friend request I ever got when I first joined Facebook. I let all of my clients, contractors and subs know. Clueless!

It wasn't long before I was unfriending everyone I worked with. One, I didn't need to know what they were doing every second of the day (and, hoo boy, some things I wish I could un-know), and two, I didn't realize how much I was putting up on FB. I've toned down my activity a lot.

Sure, I made some folks upset, but it just was not working out for me. I do have my business page up and it gets hits now and then, but I even had to take my photo down. People are just crazy.

If it were me, I'd just ignore the boss' request.
 

CUBE

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I have had a few people want to facebook that I did not think was a good idea. I sent them a nice email with me email address and stated that this is much more convenient as we work together and some other employees might not understand. This way know one had lost face in the episode.
 

mephistopheles

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Yea, You know what you mean about this one.

I don't access facebook that much, but if I was in your situation I would just accept it and see what comes of it. I'm not 100% sure though.

There are peoples friends requests I turn down cuz I don't want them reading whatever raunchy-ness I may be posting. This is your boss though, can he get you in trouble at work for something that doesnt take place at work, or even something that's not about work?

Probably.

This is a tight spot, good or bad; I don't know.
 

Intrigue

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Work=work
Home=Private
I tend to completely separate the two due to the fact that most of the people I work with I would never associate with outside of work. That's not to say I have never had a cool boss but where I work now, no.
 

Pitbull

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"more concerns arise when current employees use social networking sites inappropriately. In fact, according to a new study by Proofpoint, an Internet security firm, 17 percent of companies with 1,000 or more employees have disciplined an employee for violating blog or message board policies, while nearly nine percent reported terminating an employee for such a violation"

The above from this link
Andrew Tanick Examines the Issue of Employee Social Networking
 

Lynx

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No way. Ignore it and if it comes us, either blow it off that you are never on or just say that you only use if for family. Be sure to adjust your settings so that only friends can see your info. FYI my boss is actually blocked to aviod any intentional and/or unintentional info leaks.
 

hibernian82

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delete all the posts about him then add him , then after a few weeks or a month delete him .he'll be bored at looking at his new 'friends profile' and youll have drifted into just being a number and he wont even know your gone.