Earlier today I received the following email:
My name is XXXX. There was an article you posted on your website.
http://jonwestfall.com/XXXX/XXXXAnyway, it is not very flattering. I have been out of the job for a couple of years and have had job interviews, but when this article comes up, it is usually fatal to any job prospect.
If not too much trouble, could you please remove the article. You don’t have to do it, and i understand if you don’t, but it would help me and my family so much if you could.
Several years ago I used to post “Stupid People Alerts”, links to news articles that were examples of people acting in less-than-responsible less-than-intelligent ways. Apparently one of those articles has followed someone around, bombing their job prospects. I decided that after so many years I was fine removing the article, but as he points out, I didn’t have to (And there are still copies of the original article that I posted to out there, so his work is not done). I wish him the best of luck in finding a job, as soon as Google takes my articles out of its cache!