September 19, 2007
‘How can I turn down my boss’s Facebook invitation?’
I work in a creative advertising agency. We are a young team and it’s all very informal. My boss (who is quite cool and who I get on with well with) has just asked to be my friend on Facebook and I don’t know what to do. It’s not that I’ve got lots of sexy pictures of myself that I don’t want him to see. It’s just that I feel invaded - I’m passionate about my work but want to keep it separate from the rest of my life. I definitely don’t want him spying on what I say to my friends. He has also asked two other people in the office who have said yes and they seem to think it’s fine. But I don’t want to. Can I say no without damaging my career?
Advertising creative, female, 26
We would appreciate if you included your occupation, age and gender in your comment, but real names are not required.
This is the thing about “public” or semi-public spaces. Facebook is fine, great, fantastic for things you don’t mind everyone knowing. It’s even fine for things you want to keep semi-private since there are options for granting some access to all or just your “friends.”
Alas, you were searchable to all, and now your boss has found you. There’s not a lot you can do unless you want him not to be your friend — and that’s not so good an idea.
Turn off most of the revealing stuff. I would create a second profile and make it invisible to searches, then invite the people you really want to read your pages.
Posted by: Will | September 19th, 2007 at 9:51 pm | Report this commenthi there,
i think u should have separate facebook accounts.one for those in the office and one for your personal life (friends,etc)
cheers
Posted by: A Sumendap | September 20th, 2007 at 5:21 am | Report this commentsimple: create another identity in facebook and give him that one
separating public and private is always interestening …
Posted by: mark | September 20th, 2007 at 8:01 am | Report this commentIn any case, I would be extremely careful about writing anything on a social network website that you wouldn’t want seen up on the noticeboard at work. The internet is NOT a secure environment, and it is easy for a “friend” to cut and paste your comments to a public area. A general rule - never go down in black and white (letter, email, blog, etc) saying something you don’t want others to read.
Posted by: Gray | September 20th, 2007 at 10:19 am | Report this commentFirst, change your privacy settings so only your friends can see your messages, your wall, and your photos.
Then, just do not respond to his message. That way he cannot send you another one! And if he asks you (which he should not, because seeking out friends like he is Johnny No Mates is just pathetic really!) you can just say oh I have let my account lapse, I do not use it much.
Third, pray hard that he is not reading this exchange on FT forums.
Good luck.
Posted by: Shefaly | September 20th, 2007 at 11:07 am | Report this commentOr, post up some photos/pastimes that are so explicit and embarrasing that you can sue him for harrasment if he takes a second look or makes comment.
Posted by: Dom | September 20th, 2007 at 11:52 am | Report this commentDear Creative,
The answer is simple - get creative with FB’s privacy settings. I’ve had numerous requests from bosses, colleagues, mentors and tormentors and have simply added them to my limited profile list. My limited profile is just that - limited. It has no wall, only photos I deem worksafe and my friend list is also hidden.
And as a general rule - I also agree subscribe to Gray’s rule - never post anything online that you would be happy posting on your desk.
Posted by: plum_cheek | September 20th, 2007 at 12:26 pm | Report this commentHaving been in precisely the same position, I second plum_cheek’s advice. Set up your limited profile settings to show only the most innocuous sections(e.g. contact details, work details). Then, when you go to accept your boss’s invitation, you can simply check the box that restricts them to seeing your limited profile.
I use limited profile for a number of colleagues and ex-colleagues who I don’t know well enough to call “friends”. The limited profile is indistinguisable from one where you have simply chosen not to enter much information on your profile. The worst that will happen is your boss thinks you’re a little boring.
Posted by: autonomous | September 20th, 2007 at 1:00 pm | Report this commentThat’s an easy one.
If he sent you the add, leave it in your friend request box, don’t confirm or ignore. Turn off all your newsfeeds or limit your profile to friends only, so he can’t see any of your updates. If he asks why you haven’t accepted it, tell him you haven’t logged on in ages. This way he stays in limbo and doesn’t get offended. Standard Facebook protocol, ask any pretty woman.
If he asks you for the add, agree and then forget to do it.
Chimney Sweep, 25
Posted by: Anonymous | September 20th, 2007 at 1:37 pm | Report this commentYou shouldn’t have to do anything you don’t want to do only to please the boss- while it invades your personal privacy. This could be more of the same to come. I agree that you should keep your personal and professional life separate if you are serious about your career, and your job.
I would leave the matter, and see if it goes away, otherwise decline, if you follow the advise of above writer, it would mean that you have let the theif inside your house and have locked some of the rooms, sooner or later, he will figure a way in !
Posted by: Anonymous | September 20th, 2007 at 1:37 pm | Report this commentHe will be offended that you have locked him out of some of the areas, for sure he can figure that out?
M.
London
There´s an elegant solution to your dilemma.
Create a new “work” facebook account and upload some dull pics of yourself or whatever image/info you care to disclose to your boss and work environment. Whenever work colleagues or some odd family member/acquaintance of yours whom you´ve never really liked but are obliged to cope with… direct them to your “fake” profile as well.
That way, nobody is offended and your privacy is kept at bay.
Posted by: Anonymous | September 20th, 2007 at 1:38 pm | Report this commentDaniel
Don’t ignore his request. It’s very bad netiquette. You have three options:
1. Tell him that you prefer to keep your Facebook account separate from work and that you don’t accept colleagues’ friend invitations as a matter of course. Several of my colleagues do this and it’s a good way of keeping work and non-work life separate, also it’s not a personal snub to him.
2. Accept his friend invite but change your privacy settings so he doesn’t recieve any of your newsfeeds etc. However this means that your other friends won’t either.
3. As Daniel Karlsson suggests, just create a work Facebook page and friend him on that. Problem is that it’ll be very obvious you’ve done so and he’ll still be able to look at your non-work page.
The first option is probably the best. Pad it out with some bumpf about how professionalism and image are very important to you. There are some more professional networking sites, such as linkedin.com - set up a page there and invite him.
Female, 25, Financial PR
Posted by: Anonymous | September 20th, 2007 at 1:39 pm | Report this commentI suggest you decline his invitation. Then using your work e-mail thank him for his invite. Your work e-mail could also include a friendly suggestion that he can contact you via his work e-mail address.
Posted by: Anonymous | September 20th, 2007 at 1:41 pm | Report this commentMale at Investment Bank
The only way to get out of this without offending your boss is to accept him to your limited profile - and then check your settings to see that only work appropriate things are in your limited profile.
Posted by: Female 28 | September 20th, 2007 at 1:56 pm | Report this commentagree with the person above — keep it in the request box neither confirm or ignore — if asked say you haven’t logged on in ages. your boss has no place to think or expect you’d accept him as a friend. if he expects that you should accept and would get offended if he didn’t, that’s a boss you wouldn’t want to have anyway because then he is wierd. other scenario he is geuinely cool, did it randomly, and probably will forget or won’t ask which is hopefully the case.
Posted by: Anonymous | September 20th, 2007 at 5:32 pm | Report this commentI signed up to Facebook recently. It’s really an open place to communicate with all kinds of people. In case my boss would find me there, I use a fake name and only invited my intimate friends to join the circle. And I even didn’t use my own picture.
As people said above, you should create another profile to protect your private life. Remember this time, don’t use your really name or something which makes your boss find you easily. Good luck to you anyway.
Posted by: Erica | September 20th, 2007 at 6:49 pm | Report this commentwhy not just leave FACEBOOK?
Posted by: simon | September 20th, 2007 at 10:08 pm | Report this commentEasy - take yourself off facebook. It’s ridiculous, irritating and pointless and causes endless difficult online - and offline - social situations. Say you’re worried about the privacy issue now that it can be searched on Google. You’ll save hours of time and you can start talking to your friends abut how they are again, instead of just reading about them / ‘poking’ them (what is that about???) / letting everyone know that you’re bored on a conference call.
Posted by: Melissa | September 21st, 2007 at 11:37 am | Report this commentYou have a massive advantage over your boss. You are young enough to be a digital native, he’s probably old enough to remember life before the internet, and is super-keen to adapt. But he will always be a stranger in a strange land.
Just poke your head around his door, roll your eyes and say, Sorry, *nobody* has their boss on their facebook profile. Lulz!
(Better still, send it as an instant message)
After you’ve gone, he will sit there stroking his stubble and wondering if it’s time to move into an Executive CD position.
Posted by: Brian | September 25th, 2007 at 8:26 am | Report this commentJust tell your boss you use it as a closed network with the women in your family. It’s all wall comments about menopause, heavy flow days, pregnancy hemorrhoids, etc. He’ll be more than happy to take a pass.
Posted by: Karl | September 26th, 2007 at 2:19 am | Report this commentIt really is quite difficult to understand why a boss who is “quite cool” would aspire to gatecrash the private lives of colleagues. It is virtually as crass to ask one’s colleagues to be a friend on Facebook as it is to ask everyone to bring in private thoughts, photographs and gossip, with a view to posting them on the notice board next to the coffee point.
That said there is the possibility that your boss does indeed remember life before the internet and that he may have developed the paranoid belief, that frivolous use of the agency’s networked internet connection is detracting from the agency’s ability to achieve historic productivity norms of “client solutions”. It doesn’t seem likely that your boss has developed that belief, but it is possible that someone more senior eventually will do so. It is a virtual certainty that the knowledge of how much each networked office computer is used for dreaming as opposed to Dreamweaver exists somewhere within your agency. So although your boss is probably being prurient, it might be best to tell him that you like to keep your work and home internet use separate and, apart from emergencies, ensure that you do precisely that.
We have already seen examples of people being made redundant by text message and, given the wrong but almost ubiquitous belief that no-one knows what is done via office computers, it won’t be too long before someone thinks it is cool to poke or text “U R FIRED 4 144 MSCNDCT LULZ”. Even if your immediate boss started it.
Posted by: Ironybrew: 57, Male, Retired. | September 26th, 2007 at 2:25 am | Report this commentI wonder what the great ‘Martin Lukes’ would do…
Posted by: Dan Wilson | September 26th, 2007 at 9:15 am | Report this commentI agree with those who say to limit his access to your limited profile. It´s better to draw a line between work and friends.
Posted by: JC | September 26th, 2007 at 1:01 pm | Report this commentYes, I guess facebook and other “social networks” are like products and its cycles. If the creator does not redesign and limit some aspects, this program will loss many users.
Posted by: JC 25 Banker | September 26th, 2007 at 4:15 pm | Report this commentCall me old fashion, a cynic or whatever, but why are you on Facebook. People tend to forget that the internet is not a save place, so be careful in sharing information that are private and can be used against you in the future. Have we come to that in point in society that we reached that level of mass consumerism that makes us superficial or are we just so lonely we take every medium to feel connected to the world. So my advice would be close your Facebook account and just give a call to your best friends. Before I forget, just say to your boss that you are not Facebook anymore for reasons above, good luck.
Posted by: Waldorf | September 29th, 2007 at 11:08 am | Report this comment“You are having a party. There is this someone whom you do not particularly dislike, but prefer not to invite in this instance. But he knows of the party and wishes to come. What to do?” Add ‘face’ to ‘party’, and it’s the same problem. Decide as you would offline.
Posted by: J Michael, private banker, 38 | September 30th, 2007 at 11:38 am | Report this commentWhich one do you prefer? Facebook or Myspace?Why?
Posted by: JC 25 Banker | October 1st, 2007 at 5:44 pm | Report this commentBy accepting someones offer of friendship on facebook would you vouch for them in the real world? What are the rules of the friendship?
Posted by: Martyn | October 8th, 2007 at 9:27 pm | Report this commentSo what did you finally do? Accept his facebook invite or not? If you have not done so till now he must have got the message
Posted by: Maxxster | October 9th, 2007 at 3:07 pm | Report this commentSo what did you finally do? Accept his facebook invite or not? If you have not done so till now he must have got the message
Posted by: Maxxster | October 9th, 2007 at 3:07 pm | Report this commentTell him mysteriously that Facebook is for kids and that you prefer sites with more adult pursuits but that you ony invite people who give you massive pay rises and promotions.
Posted by: Sally | October 10th, 2007 at 1:39 pm | Report this commentWhen you add someone as a friend you can choose how much of your profile they can see - you can block him from seeing anything you don’t want him to see.
Posted by: anon | October 10th, 2007 at 6:48 pm | Report this commentJust to add, someone said that if you block your newsfeed your other friends won’t be able to see it either - this is not true, you can control privacy settings for individual ‘friends’ by allowing selected ones to see only your limited profile (you decide what’s on the ltd profile).
Posted by: anon | October 10th, 2007 at 6:50 pm | Report this commentHmmm, a problem - I can see it from both ways, having received friend requensts from people who I find a bore or who are bitter enemies of my other friends. On the other hand, a (male) colleague who I was getting on well with seems to have blocked me.
Posted by: Banker, 35, Male | October 17th, 2007 at 9:26 am | Report this commentStill, in general I think you should lighten up and stop being so anal - those are the things which will slow your career progression, not the fairly insignificant act of ignoring or restricting your facebook.
Your boss sent your the invitation without realising it; FB asked him if he wanted to invite his contacts (which list you are part of) and he said yes. FB automatically sent the invitation on behalf of your boss.
Even he will be surprised to hear he invited you (!!)
Posted by: Mwazi Ndhlovu | October 18th, 2007 at 7:07 am | Report this commentDon’t turn it down, and don’t approve it; just forget to answer one way or the other - you can always claim you didn’t see it, or it got deleted in the spam, or your computer crashed.
Don’t be intimidated into answering; not everything has to be answered.
Posted by: MIchael | October 29th, 2007 at 11:06 am | Report this commentTell your boss he shouldn’t be on facebook in the first place! Most companies are banning or limiting the use of facebook because so much time is wasted. Also you should keep your personal/public lives private. If friends will post pictures of you drunk and tag you then your boss will see it. Check out this blog posting on facebook in the workplace: http://www.secretarialblog.co.uk/2007/10/25/facebook-banned/
Posted by: Ben S. | October 30th, 2007 at 8:29 pm | Report this commentGiven your reasons, just say no. I feel somewhat saddened that you feel concerned it might hurt your career prospects. Our society is really broken.
Posted by: JB | November 8th, 2007 at 12:22 am | Report this commentYou could look at another angle. You are young, your manager is older and would want to also keep a good public image, whether it is on the internet or in the office. You will also be able to see his friends and his profile and may even help your career someday.
Posted by: Fiona, 31 | November 15th, 2007 at 3:08 am | Report this commentI suggest opening a LinkedIN account and ask your boss to join this. LinkedIN is targeted for proffesional work orientated contacts rather than personal contacts. In this way you can not only keep you FB account for friends out side work but also have a way to stay in contact with business associates (BTW I’m not connected to LinkedIN apart from being a user).
If he asks you why you haven’t accepted just say your using LinkedIN.
Goog luck
Posted by: Dave, male, 40, Sales&Marketing | November 15th, 2007 at 4:41 pm | Report this commentI suggest opening a LinkedIN account and ask your boss to join this. LinkedIN is targeted for proffesional work orientated contacts rather than personal contacts. In this way you can not only keep you FB account for friends out side work but also have a way to stay in contact with business associates (BTW I’m not connected to LinkedIN apart from being a user).
If he asks you why you haven’t accepted just say your using LinkedIN.
Goog luck
Posted by: Dave, male, 40, Sales&Marketing | November 15th, 2007 at 4:41 pm | Report this comment