Friday, August 10, 2007

Quick poll

What do you do when your supervisor tries to friend you on Facebook?

(a) Select "ignore" and hope they are able to overlook any feeling of offense when reading your next draft?

(b) Give them a "limited view" only, and hope they are able to overlook any feeling of offense when reading your next draft?

(c) Freak out and delete all incriminating parts of your profile page? (E.g. membership of groups like, "Arghhhhhhhhhh! Why did I do a Phd?!") Then accept the invitation?

Does it affect your answer if the friend request is accompanied by a message saying, "Help! Everyone's laughing at me because I have no friends!"

9 Comments:

wwwmama said...

Oh my god. Thank God I'm not on Facebook for this very reason. I think I'd go with C but that's because I freak out all the time and I'm a bit of a coward. I really hope you do A and if they say something to you, just make a joke out of it somehow.

Dr. Brazen Hussy said...

Hmmm... does someone know when you've given them "limited view"? I don't know what that looks like.

Anonymous said...

it's a good question, would she know she gave you a limited view..?

past that, i can't help. I'd simply accept my adviser's invite. she's cool.

RageyOne said...

I'd accept and I wouldn't delete any information.

Brazen - the limited view only allows the person to see only what you want them to see. You can change the settings under the Privacy setting.

StyleyGeek said...

Oops, should probably have specified. Not my supervisor. I am polling you on behalf of a friend. Her supervisor just friended her, and she is trying to decide how to handle it.

Unknown said...

I would likely have two different facebooks:
1) professional under full name that you wouldn't mind supervisors, advisors, employers seeing and fully accessing;
2) a person one under a nickname that would be hard for anyone to incidentally find, and that supervisors, employers, and advisors would be unable to find easily.

then I'd invite the supervisor to have full access to the former only.

The History Enthusiast said...

I would do the limited view. They wouldn't know the difference, I don't think.

WhatLadder said...

Totally a)

Dude, if your supervisor has no friends, do you really want him or her dragging down your facebook rep?

Unknown said...

Hello styleygeek - I followed a comment you left on ms.mac and see badaunt (another fave) reads you too. I've been reading for the last week or so. I also studied linguistics.

My boss added me as a friend on "oldfriends". Her profile says she loves her job cos she gets paid lots and gets to travel heaps. If she invited me to be a friend on Facebook I'd decline her!!!

The supervisor would just have to get over it - when I joined Facebook, I let it trawl my gmail and invite everyone with Facebook profiles to be my friend. I didn't check the list till the invites had been sent and was a little mortified to have invited my lawyer. She didn't accept me as a friend and I totally understood!