Over at Slacker Manager (which has a bunch of great new authors), managers are discussing a post from Ask a Manager.  One boss isn’t sure what to do about an employee complained about him on her blog.   Says the boss in question:

Last year, when she was applying for a job with us, the employee mentioned her blog in the course of the interview. I checked it out and enjoyed it, enough that I’ve checked in on it a couple of times since then. Today I was reminded of something she wrote and stopped by out of fleeting curiosity. I was greeted with a recent post expressing irritation at the workload she was facing while trying to get ready to go on vacation — fine, that irritates me too. But she was directly tying that predicament to me — and she was pretty snarky about it.

In my humble opinion, this employee is a little dim.  If she was thinking her blog was a good place to vent, then she needs to be reminded that blogs are in the public domain, and nothing should be said there that you don’t mind your boss (or anyone else, for that matter) “hearing.”  On the other hand, if she was simply being passive aggressive, hoping her boss would find out how disgruntled she was without having to talk to him directly, then she needs a lesson in conflict resolution.

Technology is great, but it’s no substitute for in-person relationships.  A situation like this is ripe for misunderstanding and prolonged hard feelings.  My advice to this employee would be to call her mom or her best friend if she needs to get her frustration off her chest immediately.  If being overworked is a long-term problem, though, she should sit down with her boss and proactively and positively brainstorm ways for addressing the problem.  Whining on a blog is not the answer.