Here’s What Happened After A Man Went On Yelp to Criticize His Former Bosses (Clue: He’s Now In Jail)

Absurdly Driven looks at the world of business with a skeptical eye and a firmly rooted tongue in cheek.

Not everyone leaves their employment in the best of spirits.

Corporate organizations can be nasty places. They can foment disruption and unhappiness.

William Laurence Stanley doesn’t appear to have the most positive of feelings toward his former employer, Generational Equity, a Dallas-based mergers and acquisitions company.

Indeed, he was fired by the company in 2010.

In 2013, as the Dallas Morning News reports, he began to send threatening emails to the company. He allegedly threatened to connect the company’s name with scam-like activity, making Google searches on the company bring up this allegedly nefarious link.

Oh, perhaps I forgot to mention it. Stanley was originally hired by Generational Equity to help manage its online reputation. He knows one or two things about Search Engine Optimization.

He was jailed for extortion last year. When he was released, his probation conditions demanded that he not post anything about his former employers online, without his probation officer giving their approval.

The accusation now is that he couldn’t help himself. He allegedly drifted onto Yelp. He didn’t offer a garland of compliments.

His Yelp review linked to his blog. There, readers might have found up to 67 links to articles that didn’t pour glory onto Generational Equity either. There were accusations that the company was a scam.

You might get the impression that Stanley really wasn’t impressed by his former employers.

The negative posting allegedly didn’t stop. So here we are with Stanley being arrested again. The charge this time is retaliation. The company claims he’s already lost it $75,000 in business and continues to cost it more.

I tried to contact Generational Equity, but the company didn’t immediately get back to me.

You might imagine that retaliation is rather in vogue right now, the president-elect being a master of the skill.

There is, though, a law that says if you retaliate against a “witness, victim or an informant who provides truthful information to a law enforcement officer about the commission or possible commission of a federal crime,” you might be committing a crime.

Stanley, currently in jail, contends that Generational Equity lied about him to the FBI. So his defense is that he exercised his right to free speech and told the truth.

The web really hasn’t made things easier. Online reviews might be just as fake as online news.

It seems that Stanley didn’t merely express opinions in his Yelp review and elsewhere, but offered certain statements as fact.

Currently, Generational Equity enjoys a two-and-a half star status on Yelp. That’s a one-star review, one two-star review and a five-star review.

On the site, its VP of Client Experience, Jay Hellwig, explains to one disgruntled reviewer that the company secured its Yelp page only in October. The unhappy review was posted three years ago.

Ultimately, though, if you post negative reviews of former employers and it’s traceable back to you, you might invite a rebuttal that could cost you dear.

You do, however, have the opportunity of more anonymous posting on Glassdoor.

Even there, though, the site says: “Your review should be truthful and constitute your own personal opinion and experience with your current or former employer. We don’t take sides when it comes to factual disputes, so we expect you to stand behind your statements expressed in your content.”

Some might translate this as: “If you accidentally make yourself identifiable, the company that you criticize might come after you. And then it’s your problem.”

Ultimately, what do you gain by criticizing your former employees publicly? A life fueled by resentment, perhaps.

I leave you with the words of the great and recently deceased Carrie Fisher: “Resentment is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.”