(It also might be notable that you didnt originally mention that your friend was a journalist until I asked about it which makes me think youre underestimating how much that matters.). If each person tells just one person it can end up being a lot of people. But doing so would likely out the department LW worked for, and probably LW herself. The main problem is that 'copying data in a very insecure way to be able to bring those data. So I guess maybe it is a generational thing? Yep. I didnt know how to say it without seeming to condone the breach. A majority of those who work from home would use their own personal digital devices such as laptop, tablet or mobile to perform their daily work tasks and it is also convenient for employees to. If it was something that was a big deal to LW but not huge news externally, yeah, its not a thing. I hope youre able to learn and move on from this, OP. It sounds like youre taking responsiblity for your actions and are doing your best to move on. Or it could be about a broader picture like if youd had performance issues or other problems that made it easier for them to decide to just part ways. I work in the auto industry in media communications. Understand the true risk of accidentally hitting send to the wrong person. We got [Celebrity Y] to promote a big public health initiative! What I find interesting in the original letter is LWs insistence that it was a victimless crime because nothing bad happened as a result of their leak. But OP gets to choose what they think the coworkers motivations may have been. Say I have a friend working on a presidential campaign, and she tells me theres a bunch of debate about the candidates strategy, I have to decide whether to mention that to my colleague who covers the candidate. But it sounds like it doesnt really matter that HR jumbled the details because neither was a permitted thing to do anyway. It also wasnt illegal to share it, because it was about a program or something that has now publicly been announced, so this doesnt even fall under the criminal aspect brought up in the original comment. When I read the letter, it struck me that the VERY EXCITING nature of the news was more of a reason NOT to share it. You say that the information eventually became public, and you seem to think that this mitigates the problem. I screwed up in grad school and had to go in front of an IRB board for being sent information that I hadnt gotten full clearance for. I want to caveat that when I originally wrote this, it had just happened and I was still extremely emotional about it, which is probably why I chose to leave out important information in my initial question. When I worked for the bank in the security investigation department, we had systems in place that monitored Famous Peoples accounts and would flag them if they were opened/touched. Second coworker only was put on an improvement plan. Hows work? Lack of the maturity to keep exciting news to onesself. There is a greater issue here regarding judgement. ), This didnt involve a records request. Yes, the ratted me out thing is probably not a fair assessment of what actually happened here. If it was the 2nd option then, yeah, they were going to let you go. Thats not really a response to the OP but more a pushback on some the comments. LW best of luck! OP notes that she is a government employee. Have you learned from your mistake? It should go without saying: a breach of confidentiality could and would wind up in a bar complaint in my jurisdiction. The fact is, its just not their secret to share. The 2nd chance is just too much risk as far as theyre concerned. You can never rely on people to be 100% trustworthy, no matter how long youve known them. That doesnt seem to be you, which is a great sign. A federal appeals court recently addressed whether employees had standing to bring a lawsuit when their personally identifiable information (PII) was inadvertently circulated to other employees at the company, with no indication of misuse or external disclosure. Resist the temptation to gossip about fellow employees and don't express your disdain for your. Either way, if you commit an offense, its best to never go with its not that big of a deal anyways. Owning up to your mistakes at the right time is hard and the natural instinct to defend yourself is strong, but ultimately thats the best thing to do and garners respect. We are not in kindergarten. Im also not going to tell anyone else! Ive been in the position of having the relevant information, and even if its hard, you just cant tell your journalist friends unless youre okay with them using it: its what they do, and its not fair to ask them not to. It can, should, and does happen, depending on the details of what all happened. In some cases, those policies . And even more so in ballistic missile submarines! Im sorry but it would definitely be a good idea to recognise that this is a really big deal and learn from it. Im curious about how to turn the page, and I think your advice is really good about this own it, let go of the defensiveness, be ready to talk about changes youve made so it wont happen again. Yep! The coworker could have totally done the right thing and the LW would still have a right to be annoyed and hurt by the action. But it could be that GSA's dad had a code/password to verify it was actually him and the caller forgot to verify that first. Accept responsibility for what you did. Its to LWs friends credit that she didnt pass on the info to a journalistic colleague who DOES work in that area; its not to LWs credit. The org needed to know in order to assess potential damage and limit future opportunities. I would go through the channels to fire someone immediately over this, because it would make me lose all trust in them and if I can no longer be confident in their abilities to do their job effectively without spillage, theyre of no use to my team. All rights reserved. But there was no way we were actually going to get the contract now if they didnt. As a fellow human being, I absolutely get the impulse to tell someone about something! Im still learning Slack, so maybe being naive. If you own your mistake, meditate on it, learn from it, and learn to tell the story of how you learned from it, then you might be able to get another job in the communications industry working for a company that does not handle sensitive client data, or in another industry where there are no potential confidentiality issues with your job. People working on campaigns get to be privy to all sorts of information that is not intended to be public. OP if I was part of an interview for you, and you brought up this situation the way its phrased here, Im sorry to say it would be an immediate pass. However, placing the blame on the coworker for the entire situation, even just in her own head, is likely to come though when she talks about why she was fired. Because when your mentor is a coworker at the same employer, you cannot, cannot speak as freely. On Monday, I was called into a fact-finding meeting with HR. 1964 is what I remember. Life may not look better in 6 months but I bet it does in 3 years. If her friend never told anyone it never would have gotten out. Agreed. Im sure he knew about things that he would have liked to talk about, and my dad can talk about anything to anyone at great length. Some seem to imply there is no reason ever to leak information, which isnt true. We've added a "Necessary cookies only" option to the cookie consent popup. Yes! Ideally. People just seemed to forget that with Epic, even one second of accessing a chart is recorded. Unfortunately there are certain positions where you dont get a second chance when the error knowingly breaking a rule. Aug. 4, 2008, at 11:14 a.m. 7 Ways Your E-mail Can Get You Fired. If you embezzle from the company and tell a coworker who then reports it, the mistake is embezzlement, not telling a coworker about it. I went to my boss explained the situation and let me boss make the decision if we wanted to share the report. She showed no contrition or reflection. Unfortunately accepting responsibility doesnt always work in some workplaces, it just digs your hole. In sending that information to your own mailbox, you transmitted the data to a number of machines, any number of which could be intercepting the data for reading, and many do albeit for legit purposes of scanning for advertising relevant stuff or scanning viruses. You violated your contract so your previous employer had little choice but to let you go - your new employer will understand this but if you show them you've accepted responsibility for it and will make sure never to do that again then I think you've got a good chance of getting another position. Nothing dangerous, and while I was there it honestly wasnt even anything that would be a big scoop or exciting dinner party story. Other agencies will provide title and dates, and whether you are eligible for rehire. Youre not in a gang or on a schoolyard playground or fighting with your sibling in the backseat of the family station wagon. so that youre ready the next time it happens at your next job. You knew better. If the coworker said that when that wasnt communicated to her, that was wrong as hell. Moving on from that company is probably a mixed blessing. Are there any reasons why the coworker couldnt be upfront with what had to be done ? The phone rang in the middle of the night and my mother picked it up, before she could hand the phone to my father, the person on the other end of the phone explained everything that was going on and why he was calling. RIGHT NOW it is totally privileged information and it needs to be treated that way. We let him go for incredibly poor judgmentlike putting me as a reference, for example.. With all the Data Protection rules, the E-privacy Regs, yes - and sorry, GDPR, my friend was in panic mode as they still didn't really understand their situation. Unless things have changed since I was in j-school (which is a possibility), off-the-record arrangements are basically the journalistic equivalent of a pinky swear. The client can, of course, prevent such disclosure by refraining from the wrongful conduct. Yep, I have a friend whose grandmother was a codebreaker and took loose lips sink ships seriously till her dying day. It may help in your next position to transpose your thinking around these things a bit. That's why employers ask employees to sign technology use policies, as it appears yours has - to ensure the employee is aware of policy. I actually think your big mistake was telling your coworker, not telling a trusted friend. The company would have thought everything was hunky dory, but they would have employee on staff who did not understand confidentially requirements. What if another journalist saw the email over your friends shoulder? For me, that was it. And the coworker, well, this was information that was a major conduct infraction, not just embarrassing or private if a coworker told me theyd done this, Id have promptly reported it, not to humiliate them, but to start the process of damage control. Of course, but if you think that there arent tons of people out there whove made huge mistakes and managed to keep it from getting out, youre kidding yourself. But would the government do that? Even though I was only suspended for two weeks, it hurt so, so much. I understand the issue had to be reported, but why this way ? LW I encourage you to ask yourself why you wrote this: Your actions showed you were not trustworthy with confidential information. You can bet Id be gone with no second chance despite my almost-20-years and ton of good work. Was alphabet city watching his ass, no idea. I imagine theres a section in the manual and training (possibly annually) about the great responsibility they bear around confidentiality and how people will try to scam them into breaching security, yet OP does not appreciate the weight of this. This is so well said. I can't remember the details, but there was a point about the fact the word "confidential" added in every e-mail by such a notice wasn't actually helpful, since tools that looked for the word confidential were flagging everything up, including a large number of false positives. Am I missing something? Passing it off as a mistake, or trying to portray ignorance (in the sense of saying "oh, I didn't realize it was wrong when I did it") is just going to make it sound like you don't bother understanding or following policies. Yeah, one of my former coworkers, who was allegedly fired from our company for bringing a gun to work, found another job a couple months later in our same industry. Theres a difference between wishing you had a second chance (acknowledges they arent entitled to one) and being upset you didnt have one (expected that there would be one). And then THAT person got so excited that they just had to tell someone Each person thinks theyre only telling one other person, and that they can trust that person. Whilst Im sure the OP is a perfectly nice person, theres a reason that there are office shootings and other awful things, some people are not. Then both OP and Coworker could be out of a job. I know there are cases where someone might fear retaliation etc, but with a higher up getting a subordinate into (deserved sorry OP!) Embargoes and off-the-record information are for journalists who are actually covering a story and in most cases that information can be shared in the newsroom (by saying a source told me off record if confidentiality is really important) and acted upon (you can start to write out a story to be ready when the embargo lifts, or call work to corroborate the off-the-record with on background or on record sources). Depending on the circumstances, you can indeed get fired for sending what you assume to be a private email or text. Ive been thinking a lot about apologies in general lately, and one of the most thought-provoking pieces of advice Ive seen is to always err on the side of assuming that whatever you did was a bigger deal than you think. still cant believe that happened. But folks with strong confidentiality duties often dont disclose the confidential parts of the information to their trusted confidants or partners. the coworker had an obvious physical feature that the poster mentioned, so the company was able to figure out who was discussing it in a public place and *fired* them for it. Since you touched on it in your follow-up, OP, dont look at this as not getting a second chance. You are its just going to happen at another organization. OP, specifically following up with Alisons advice above, you were fired because you showed your employer that your first reaction when learning about confidential information was to text (1) someone outside of your company who was not authorized to know that information and (2) someone who was a journalist, who by profession is at risk for leaking said confidential information EVEN IF you only know them as a friend and EVEN IF you promise pinky swear that they would never ever do that. It was a refreshingly candid answer and so we wound up hiring him. That the information eventually became public is not in any way relevant. Fired. The Solicitors Regulation Authority has also issued a written rebuke to Christopher Gossage, of Russells solicitors, who confided to his wifes best friend that Robert Galbraith, author of The Cuckoos Calling, was really one of the most famous and wealthy authors in the world. and sent to multiple people (!!)? OP will also want to consider not focusing her career path on jobs that require a security clearance for classified information. I doubt it was the plan to storm Area 51. So, I can talk about it, I can say Omg, there was one scene that I was just like SuperCheese! and rolling my eyes. The Workplace Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for members of the workforce navigating the professional setting. How do I politely turn down the call for an interview by another employer? I do have to wonder if the hospital failed to educate its employees on how freaking serious that kind of breach was, although Id still put the failure on the feet of the violators. This is to prevent LW from trying to destroy any evidence.
Vegan Personal Chef Houston,
Toad Knitting Pattern,
Articles C
