Unvarnished - a website to publish anonymous workplace gripes

Employees who feel like they can get away with crass or arrogant behavior at the workplace may want to think again.

A new website is ruffling some feathers by allowing employees and employers to anonymously criticize their coworkers in an open forum, according to a recent article for Time magazine.

Writer Dan Fletcher says that the Unvarnished website is in a period of private beta testing but is already causing stirs among professionals because it allows users to bash not only their fellow employees, but their doctors, computer technicians and bosses.

"It's a concept that has caused some controversy, particularly since Unvarnished allows employees to be reviewed anonymously and with no way of removing a negative review", the report says. "Your co-worker can't seek you out for retribution, and your comment is left there for the world - and potentially future employees - to see".

The website aggregates reviews to generate a five-star rating along with comments from individual reviewers.

Unvarnished was co-founded by veteran producers of websites LinkedIn and eBay, the publication says.

Another user-generated review website recently drew fire from businesses that didn't like its policies. Yelp changed its policy to delete reviews permanently from the website so as not to give favorable treatment to some of its advertisers, according to MediaPost.