BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. -- A Hollywood waiter is claiming an encounter with star Jane Adams cost him his job at a popular eatery.

Jon-Barrett Ingels, 31, claims Adams, who plays Tanya on the HBO series, visited celeb hot spot Barney Greengrass (the cafe on the fifth floor of Barneys New York in Beverly Hills) in July and "skipped out on a $13.44 check," he posted on his Twitter page earlier this summer.

"Her agent called and payed (sic) the following day. NO TIP!!!" he wrote on July 17.

And as it turns out, it was venting on his Twitter page that ultimately cost Ingels his job.

A good spot of wire story. Here's a link to it on our site:

http://www.victoriaadvocate.com/news/...

Excerpt from Yahoo,

In response to media attention on players' social networking sites, Texas Tech issued a team-wide ban on Twitter sites after this post was originally published Monday morning. Please see the update at the bottom of the post.

Marlon Williams' Twitter account for Exhibit A, where the senior linebacker admitted Sunday morning the season is not going as expected, and by Sunday afternoon was expressing outright frustration with Leach's flakiness:
[UPDATE, 1:51 p.m. ET] Aaaaand Texas Tech players are hereby banned from Twitter. That took a few hours longer than I expected, actually, but Leach is not really into the whole online thing, as we learned in July:

So word may travel a little slower to his desk. Where will we go for our Red Raider frustration news now?

Well, Mike Forman is a UCLA Bruins fan, and we tolerate him.

Seriously, though, you raise a legitimate point that we have to be careful about appearances of balance. For example, journalists do not join any political causes for this reason.

At the same time, we have to be acknowledge we are regular people like our neighbors and come into any story with our own filters. That's why we have to seek out a variety of sources and recognize our limitations.

But, no, we shouldn't let any of this turn into a personal attack on a reporter. We don't allow that on this forum against any individual.

Thanks for the discussion.

For God's sake speechfree, we tolerate you; I cannot see how we could be more tolerant.

This unfortunately opens a Pandora's box. I am painfully liberal and find individuals uniqueness as a joy to indulge in. But as a business a reporter sharing the membership in an unpopular faith say "heavens gate" or they are a member of an unpopular organization such as the ACLU or are fans of UCLA football will the advocate take the persecution from subscribers who have problems with that ? The Advocate has tragically lost staff members what if delicacies of the circumstances become unkind chatter on such a network ? I am by my nature forgiving and realize communication on such networks which is instant does not have benefit of an editors experienced feedback but our town can at times be intolerant to such things.

Speechfree,

We're trying to build a team that's focused on the Advocate's success, which we think starts with great customer service. To get there, we have to trust our employees to say and do what's best for the organization.

I'm not familiar with the cases you cite, so I certainly don't dispute them. My argument is we need to get beyond legal reasoning and aim to do the right thing. To get there, we have to trust our employees to exercise good judgment.

If they take a misstep based on good intentions, I hope we'll all work together to get back on the right path. We're not out to eliminate any employee who tries to connect with readers via social media.

I like your screen name, by the way.

This is the South and an employee is just short of being the property of the employer. The 5th Circuit has offered little protection to public employees expressing themselves freely in other forums:
Williams v. Dallas Indep. Sch. Dist., 480 F.3d 689, 692 (5th Cir. 2007).In Williams, the Fifth Circuit defined when an employee is speaking pursuant to his “official duties.” Id. at 693-94. This Court first noted that “a formal job description is not dispositive, . . . nor is speaking on the subject
matter of one’s employment.” Id. at 692 (citing Garcetti, 126 S. Ct. at 1959, 1961). The Court went on to state that speech required by one’s position as an employee is not protected by the First Amendment.6 Williams, 480 F.3d at 693. However, because the speech at issue in Williams was not required by Williams’s job responsibilities, the Court went on to “determine the extent to which, under Garcetti, a public employee is protected by the First Amendment if his speech is
not necessarily required by his job duties but nevertheless is related to his job duties.” Id. (emphasis added). This Court ultimately concluded that “[a]ctivities undertaken in the course of performing one’s job are activities pursuant to official duties.” Id.

I am sure that if an Advocate employee expresses themselves in a manner that the Advocates feels reflects poorly on them they will eliminate the employee and the courts will protect them.

dude I been lookin for you , Where was the story on them busted up cowboys gettin smashed in front of 105,000 fans?

Sounds to me like the Advocate simple guideline out shines the Post.