3 ms·

A friend of mine was turned off of a potentially new employee the other day because the candidate exclaimed that they recognized a customer from their instagram

A friend of mine was turned off of a potentially new employee the other day because the candidate exclaimed that they recognized a customer from their instagram profile and that they followed it, loved it, etc. The customer was obviously embarrased, exclaimed that he had not used instagram in over a year, and promptly left the store. This left an uneasy feeling in my friend (the store owner). Which confused me to be honest. What did that customer expect when they placed their picture and basically entire lives on a public website with geotagged images? The new employee was told to be talkative with all clients as they worked in customer service, and so they attempted to strike up a conversation or at least a similar interest in the customer's publicly viewable leisure activities. That was how the candidate discovered him on instagram in the first place by the way. It was because he only posted pictures of the local area.

atmosx 12y ago
Oh men. Working with people is extremely complicated, yet very educative if have the right mindset. That was an accident IMHO, better not judge by one case scenario. I know a lots of guys and girls, especially youngsters who would love to hear about their facebook/twitter/instagram profiles.
anigbrowl 12y ago
Yeah, kind of a dubious move on your friend's part - how was the potential employee supposed to guess that the customer would feel embarrassed, in a bad way (as opposed to 'oh that picture was so embarrassing, haha')? Seems to me as it does you that it's the customer's reponsibility to own whatever s/he posts publicly. I guess some people think that their followers on social media must all be personal acquaintances/relatives and are then weirded out to discover that some complete strangers may take an interest in them, but that's their problem Obviously there are exceptions to this, it wouldn't be cool to start an argument with someone over old Twitter comments or to say 'oh hey, I say you on the revenge porn subreddit.' It's sad that I even need to delineate such boundaries, but there you go.
Aoyagi 12y ago
I believe a lot of people think Internet is an entirely different dimension. "What happens on the Internet stays on the Internet" or something.
keithpeter 12y ago
"The customer was obviously embarrased, exclaimed that he had not used instagram in over a year, and promptly left the store." Was there a significant age difference between the luckless candidate and the customer? Just guessing.
- GigabyteCoin 12y ago
  Maybe 10 years, not much of an age difference as far as I know. They were all under 40 I imagine.

atmosx 12y ago

Oh men. Working with people is extremely complicated, yet very educative if have the right mindset. That was an accident IMHO, better not judge by one case scenario. I know a lots of guys and girls, especially youngsters who would love to hear about their facebook/twitter/instagram profiles.

anigbrowl 12y ago

Yeah, kind of a dubious move on your friend's part - how was the potential employee supposed to guess that the customer would feel embarrassed, in a bad way (as opposed to 'oh that picture was so embarrassing, haha')? Seems to me as it does you that it's the customer's reponsibility to own whatever s/he posts publicly. I guess some people think that their followers on social media must all be personal acquaintances/relatives and are then weirded out to discover that some complete strangers may take an interest in them, but that's their problem Obviously there are exceptions to this, it wouldn't be cool to start an argument with someone over old Twitter comments or to say 'oh hey, I say you on the revenge porn subreddit.' It's sad that I even need to delineate such boundaries, but there you go.

Aoyagi 12y ago

I believe a lot of people think Internet is an entirely different dimension. "What happens on the Internet stays on the Internet" or something.

keithpeter 12y ago

"The customer was obviously embarrased, exclaimed that he had not used instagram in over a year, and promptly left the store." Was there a significant age difference between the luckless candidate and the customer? Just guessing.

GigabyteCoin 12y ago
Maybe 10 years, not much of an age difference as far as I know. They were all under 40 I imagine.