Offices often have to deal with disgruntled employees or employees who are living a double life. Unfortunately, every once in a while a disgruntled employee or an employee with unknown or hidden background will actually be hired. The new era of social media and interaction on the Internet has magnified the severity of the outbursts from disgruntled employees and can affect an office atmosphere. The line has to be drawn when such behavior disturbs office productivity and causes tension between employees. The examples included below are from real-life employees who were outed and caught on social networking sites. It stresses the importance of a criminal background check and pre employment screening on every potential employee!

1. Buckingham Palace Guardsman Cameron Reilly isn’t Kate Middleton’s biggest fan and was quickly fired after his Facebook post leaked through to the entire public. He posted: “Hur and william drove past me on Friday n all a got was a wave while she looked the opposite way from me, stupid stuck up cow am I not good enough for them!” With open comments like the one above, is not hard to imagine what happened next.

2. After tweeting jokes about the disaster in Japan, Gilbert Gottfried was fired from his job as the Aflac duck voice. Although the jokes were from his Twitter account, Japan notified the company and they quickly released him as they deal with 75% of Japan’s business and tried to respect the devastation occurring in the country.

3. A burlesque dancer who went by the name Professor Shimmy had her identity revealed over some performances posted on You Tube and was fired from her job for her after-hour activities. According to new reports, she was an associate professor at John F. Kennedy University and the University was not impressed with her burlesque hobby believing it would hinder her credibility as a professor. In March, she sued the university over firing her.

4. In a place where smoking is banned on campus, the last person you’d expect to break the rules would be the school principal. However, that was just what happened when the Principal of Central High School in Providence, Rhode Island, decided to smoke on campus. A student snapped a shot of her smoking and posted it to his Web site. He then proceeded to pass out flyers all around campus urging other students to visit his site and view the picture. Little did he know that by doing this he’d be granted several days off from school (what a punishment)! Once the local news caught wind of what happened, the student’s suspension was stopped.

Many and most employees seem to be honest, upstanding citizens but their personal lives and activities can speak more about them than anything else. Discover what your employees are doing in their spare time and from now on hire only potential employees with clean records.