I have. I started a new job a couple of years ago and, not wanting to offend my new co-workers, soon had 50 or so new workplace friends (they accessed my profile through my friend who I also worked with). I struggled with the extreme personality differences between myself and my co-workers. The majority were hardcore Type A personalities and not very tolerant of Type B’s, like myself. I also quickly learned the work environment was highly toxic, with disgruntled staff, bullying, gossip, backstabbing, and was teeming with rumours. Wanting to control the means used for the active probing of staff into my personal life, I deactivated my account. This wasn’t a hard step for me as the novelty of Facebook had passed and it held little interest for me. About 4 months later, after accidently re-activating my account (and realizing it is nearly impossible to completely cut facebook ties), I decided I should not let these people I did not like or have much respect for dictate my life away from work. I de-friended them all in one clean sweep and spent an evening updated my “blocked people” list.
I should have been smarter about my Facebook related decisions from the get go. The new job was at a federal prison (not sure how I found myself there!) and was warned during my training that staff’s facebook pages were frequently monitored and content and friends should be carefully considered. The consequences of higher ups seeing something unbecoming, suggestive, conflicting with personal info they have about you, and so on can be significant.
Even when there is little risk of harm to a person from mixing facebook with work and relationships with co-workers are amiable, I think its important to keep one’s job separate from life away from work. It helps to ensure healthy boundaries and decreases the likelihood of work permeating other areas of life.