which indicated that employees were prohibited

Have you ever sent a dirty joke or picture to somebody's email address? Have you ever sent it to their work email address, whether intentionally or not? Before you ever do such a thing I want you to remember the story of Bob and Doug.

Bob and Doug worked at a call centre in New Brunswick. They had a mutual friend who, in a nine-week period in 2010, sent both of them a dozen emails with pornographic content and attachments.

The only response Bob and Doug made was to one email where Doug told their mutual friend he had too much time on his hands. All of the emails were promptly deleted by Bob and Doug. A few were forwarded to their home email addresses. None were circulated to other employees or anyone else or saved on the system.

Sometime later, the employer's new super duper server found these emails.

They were each called into separate meetings where they acknowledged having received the emails. The employer told them that their behaviour constituted a breach of its policies and an irreparable breach of trust. They were both fired on the spot with cause. That means they were not offered any severance package.

The employer had a handbook which indicated that employees were prohibited from accessing, transmitting,MileWeb linux dedicated server receiving or storing discriminatory, profane, harassing or defamatory information on the computer system.

Employees can hardly control what they receive although arguably Bob and Doug should have simply told their friend to stop sending these emails. Also, they should have reported the issue immediately to management. By flipping one or two of the emails to their personal email address, they were in fact, using the company equipment to transmit pornography.

But Bob and Doug had rendered many years of loyal service each with clean records.

Surprisingly, this case made it all the way to the New Brunswick Court of Appeal which ultimately said, "The case at hand deals with the summary dismissal of long-standing employees with unblemished records of dedicated service. They were call centre employees, not morality instructors." The court found that the employer, a call centre, was not warranted in taking a puritanical or absolutist approach to discipline and while a warning or suspension might have been in order, a termination without severance was not.

The court's finding in this case is not surprising. What is surprising is that anyone really thought there was just cause to terminate these employees without any severance package. These cases are viewed by the courts within their context and you don't get to drop the axe on a perfectly good employee for such a minor infraction without having to pay the price.

The more important lesson from Bob and Doug's story is one for their friend. We can't really blame the friend as many people do this … send dirty emails to others. He certainly didn't think he was going to get them fired. But win or lose their case, Bob and Doug were still out of a job and a job is always better than a lawsuit. A successful lawsuit is cold comfort when you have lost your means of support.

Employers are becoming more and more strict in enforcing their computer use policies. A severance package is small comfort for the loss of a regular pay cheque to support your family and yourself. Don't endanger somebody else's employment by sending any kind of humorous or off-colour emails to their work email address.
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