Assignment Details
Carl works as a waiter for a restaurant in Panama City Beach, Florida. The restaurant closes at 11:00 p.m. Two patrons came in at 10:30 p.m. and stayed until 12:00 a.m. Carl was their waiter and gave excellent customer service. The patrons left a $5.00 tip for Carl on a $200.00 bill and left a note saying, “Go back to school if you want more money.” Carl was so upset that he went home and posted on Facebook about how cheap, stinky, and ugly the patrons were. Carl mentioned the restaurant name in his post. Carl had only 20 Facebook friends, and his privacy settings only allowed friends to see his posts. One of Carl’s coworkers saw the post and told the restaurant manager. The restaurant manager terminated Carl based on violating two company policies: 1. The policy prohibiting speaking disparagingly about customers and 2. The policy prohibiting casting the restaurant negatively on social media networks. Carl is not in a union. Respond to the following:
Analyze (using what you have learned about a reasonable expectation of privacy) whether or not the restaurant’s termination of Carl violated his legal expectation of privacy.
Share your thoughts with your classmates on whether you think Carl’s First Amendment rights were violated.
In your own words, please post a response to the Discussion Board and comment on other postings. You will be graded on the quality of your postings.
For assistance with your assignment, please use your text, Web resources, and all course materials.
