If in or near Aberdeen, Scotland you may have spotted the #sandwichvan hashtag on Twitter and it’s one of those old incidents where in-love boy and girl who work at the same place have been emailing each other, it gets a little saucy and then a wrong person gets the emails. Said wrong person responds discretely.

Now it’s gone a little viral bringing a bit of (implied) notoriety to the company they work at and it might be a misuse of IT but should anyone lose a job over it?

No. It’s embarassing, let’s not kid on but as bad as it is for the company, the people involved – who have been named online – are going to get it worse, especially the girl because that’s the way people (wrongly) treat these things.

Perhaps one person could be sacked though

Not that I’m advocating someone being sacked but this didn’t get out online by itself. Someone had to have leaked it. If there’s disciplinary action anywhere, that’s where I would put it. That’s the person that exposed the members of staff involved as well as the company.

Or is it changing times and attitudes?

A lot of younger people nowadays shrug their shoulders at this stuff and go “so, I was having sex. And?” Add this to the fact that most companies are relaxed about staff emailing each other, is this really a big thing or does it just show that the older generation are perverts for reading it and sharing?

I don’t think so. I don’t think everyone is that laidback about it and, more to the point, I don’t think many firms would just shrug it off as ‘people have sex’ but it would be nice if they could.

UPDATE: Great to see Aberdeen City Council jump into this and use the hashtag to promote road safety and traffic information:

Whether you drive a #bus #car or #sandwichvan in Aberdeen you’ll find useful gritting & snow clearing information here: bit.ly/WMYGfj

— Aberdeen CC (@AberdeenCC) January 24, 2013