Please banish the phrase ratted out from your vocabulary and thinking. I mean in the end there is not a lot of reasons to trust either, but demonstrating ongoing cluelessness is not a good way to sell this will never happen again. Can You Be Fired for Sending Personal E-Mails at Work? She broke a very real and important rule. Spek raised a good point- find out what your HR policy is so you know what to be prepared for in an interview. Thank you for pointing this out! Unfortunately there are certain positions where you dont get a second chance when the error knowingly breaking a rule. LW, youve learned half of your lesson, but really need to keep working to get there. I work for a public universitys PR office and I 100% know Id be fired if I shared info with anyone before pub date. Even if you feel that way, definitely dont say that! 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. My point is that you learn how to share AND maintain confidentiality. It wasnt particularly kind to her friend, either. Take this to heart in your next position and deal with sensitive information. You really think a lawyer would publicly (extremely publicly) admit to doing something he hadnt done, for which he was sanctioned and fined by regulators, and permanently ruin his own reputation in the process? Mandatory reporting is a thing that exists. I see it a lot and I wonder sometimes if its not sending the wrong message that its okay to break confidentiality because Friendship/Family Conquers All or something. But given the kind of convo LW describes.while the LW really should not have been surprised they got reported and then fired, and does seem to be downplaying the severity, I wonder if something about the convo led them to believe it was somehow less serious than the mentor clearly understood it to be, and mentor didnt seem to do anything to help the LW understand how big a deal this is, which is kind of a bummer. I think this really depends. I sent confidential documents to someone by accident via email I need the file completely removed - Gmail Community Gmail Help Sign in Help Center Community New to integrated Gmail Gmail Stay on. Having said that, as a hiring manager, if you were able to talk to me about how this one-time error in judgment caused a deep shift in thinking and was a critical pivot point in your professional development I would hear you out. They might tell superiors accidentally, out of frustration (e.g. Like, how did HR and OPs boss come to the conclusion that this information was spread through Slack (!) Not generational, just a young person thing. (Even if its not an area she covers, she likely knows the person who does, and journalists share tips/info all the time.). In jobs that require non-disclosure, active disclosure is a very big deal. So Id do what Alison says here, and save your OMG I cant keep this in confessions for your pets. I was trying to disagree with the idea that it puts journalists in a terrible position to receive off-the-record info, not that it would ameliorate the employers concern. I hope you mean it when you say you understand the magnitude of this mistake and why you were fired for it. Period. The only thing even slightly puzzling is why during the conversation with the mentor, mentor didnt say you do understand I am obligated to report this? Maybe mentor thought that might prompt LW to do something track-covering so it was better left going directly to the bosses without warning. Is this the appropriate place to bring up Anthony Scaramucci not even uttering the phrase off-the-record during his bizarre call to Ryan Lizza and then being upset when his words were published? If youre found to be lying, thats an instant rejection in a way that a well-explained firing would not be. I even tell friends this who work in classified situations and I dont even report the news anymore.). Alisons words are great to have prepared, and be super clear that you understand it was a problem, it was bad, and you take it very seriously. Now I just leave and cry and deal with the long-term consequences, like never moving up. This was also my thought. She already got that advice from Alison. You simply let the sender know you've received it by accident, then they can rectify their mistake and you can delete the email. I agree with you that its ok for OP to feel resentful (at least in the short-run)! The financial firm I worked for had mandatory quarterly compliance meetings with examples of Dont Be This Guy Because He Doesnt Work Here Anymore. You dont get a warning for things like that. If you werent human, you wouldnt make mistakes. Find somewhere else to tell it in order to release the steam valve. Plenty of folks are friends in my business lobbyists, journalists, staffers you cant lose control of your impulse to share information. I agree. Taking full responsibility isnt just the better moral choice, its the more effective one. 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. Contact the recipient Get in touch with the recipient as soon as you notice the mistake and ask them to delete the email without reading or sharing it. In fact, if you are being sent overseas, you have to take a special counterintelligence training before you go that includes tips like dont wear items with your agencys name written on them while you travel and never park next to a panel van.. Yup. Id spend some time processing how you felt and trying to learn to take accountability and personal responsibility for this (and seriously its something thats really uncomfortable and hard for everyone but it helps so much). Its also possible that she got caught in a broader crackdown on leaks and thus wasnt given a second chance when she otherwise might have been. Recently, the National Guard was hit with a data breach, where files containing personal information were unintentionally transferred to a "non-DoD-accredited data center by a . Age is hardly an indicator of a persons ability to consistently make the best choices at all times. In the real world, it happens often enough that I think its more realistic to talk about the practical ways to do it that keep you on the safe side of the boundaries. And thats still very unrealistic / way off-base, if OP truly gets why this was a slam-dunk decision, in that particular circumstance. I see a lot of people saying that its always wrong to share confidential information with the press, and thats not necessarily true. Thank you for explaining this! I dont recall that Lily Rowan ever had a job. I think youd be in trouble for sharing that kind of information over the phone, regardless of who he was talking to. No one was allowed to approach her and her desk for the week and every night she locked up the removable ribbon from her typewriter because it could be unspooled and read. Pro tip: when working in mental health residential treatment, do not have clients write your staff logs. Noooooo. Yeah, Im wondering that too. Fortunately, I was not fired for the mistake, but my employer did call me on the carpet for a very serious discussion on why we cant share any information that we only have access to because we work there, regardless of how sensitive or not sensitive we think it is on a case-by-case basis. We will always be privy to confidential information in our roles, its the nature of what we do. I sent confidential documents to someone by accident via email - Google If you find a colleague has breached confidentiality like this, procedures are typically clear that you DO NOT approach them yourself. The latter looks more like something that could repeat under similar circumstances. Im also a supervisor. Nah, I think the odds of whats super exciting to a government agency being equally exciting to me are pretty slim. Handling confidential information discreetly is a day to day part of working in communications, particularly for government entities (I say as someone in this field). Practice talking about it until you can truly pull it off. In McMorris v. So this. 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. This was a Friday. In some cases, those policies . They have absolutely no obligation to keep secrets for government agencies or private companies. So- bad judgement buddies? how do employers know if you're answering "have you ever been fired" honestly? Humans, in general, are not geared towards confidentiality and secrecy long-term. The OPs comment here didnt seem defensive to me at all, and its definitely understandable that the letter was written in the heat of the moment. Yeah, I think CA meant, the message was only sent to the friend/journalist, but you dont know where she opened it: if shes in an open newsroom or something, someone could have seen it on her screen over her shoulder. Is a HIPAA Violation Grounds for Termination? - HIPAA Journal Good luck with your job search! Also, am I even allowed to bring up the fact that someone ratted me out? reading. Oh, dear. In other words, this whole line of discussion is moot. Quite recently, a client of my firm contacted us to say they had heard staff in a bar gossiping about another client. And then that coworker did tell someone, and she was fired. Thats a big deal. Maybe she had to report it for her job (as some people are speculating) but even still, its okay to be annoyed at someone even if its not 100% logical. This may have been part of why the manager took the steps she did. And I dont think it helps the OP to say that she doesnt have the right to have feelings of resentment toward the coworker. Long since past, now.). That all strikes me as stuff someone quite young and without strong professional and personal boundaries acts. LW already feels wronged. Im a publicist. Yes, or that appalling line by E M Forster, written just before the Second World War: if I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend I hope I should have the guts to betray my country. If you shared something with me that I didnt ask you about or probe for, and just knowing it could jeopardize my reputation or career you bet your ass Id share it with our manager. 2. It doesnt matter that its a good friend of yours who happens to be a journalist shes a journalist, and her JOB is to tell people about things she finds out about. It will get out, eventually. Im sure the OP will find a new job. We wont tell anyone. It doesnt matter that the information is going public next week. Its not about breaking a rule, its about potentially causing some serious issues by leaking information. If it does, you can explain calmly that in a moment of weakness, you broke a serious rule regarding sending information to someone outside the company, but youve learned a hard lesson you never intend to repeat. What happens if an email is sent to the wrong person? : r/gdpr - Reddit The first person needs to understand that most of the time, you arent entitled to negotiate a yes, because the answer is no. Even when it doesnt rise to the level of legal shenanigans might happen, it can be pretty serious. While irritating, email from mass marketing lists dont require a response and you probably wouldnt get an answer anyway. Moving on from that company is probably a mixed blessing. They might try to use silence to get you to say more. This was not the coworker telling the boss that OP left 5 minutes early, took a personal call during work hours but OP violating a strict rule even if they trusted the friend. Its no more blind-siding because the coworker reported the issue, than it would be if, say, IT had reported it after monitoring OPs traffic. People are going think, If OP can minimize all the responsibility for this incident, she is going to be able to rationalize it away some other time in the future. [TN] Accidentally emailed very confidential information. What - Reddit You made yourself very vulnerable, your mentor knew that, and unfortunately, youre now bearing the consequences. 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. Obviously leaking to one journalist that youre friends with is better than leaking to a whole Slack channel full of them, but partly because its possible to do the first innocently, whereas theres no question of innocence with the latter. You are fortunate to get the opportunity to learn it early when it hasnt resulted in severe long term consequences. how else could you have met that need?) There is a greater issue here regarding judgement. This technique requires extra steps, but it . So far that has not happened. OP, please do not take this comment string seriously, because internalizing these statements will severely harm your ability to address your error effectively. There are, unfortunately, many things I am doomed to not know even though I would really like to find out. I understand that you get that what you did was a very big deal as a single event, but I think you might need to spend some more time examining for yourself why you would describe this as a victimless crime. The fact that your friend didnt as far as you know tell anyone else about your bombshell doesnt meant that nothing happened. She probably felt she had a duty to disclose it and she may well have. Embarrassing or inappropriate communications sent via company email can damage professional credibility, reputations, and careers. This is a situation that youre going to have great difficulty explaining away and I might prefer a resume gap to being at such a disadvantage. You still have to go through the same information request as someone who doesnt work there. For example, a lot of insider trading is based on the TIMING of someone finding out information. Im also miffed by the fact that the coworker kinda blind sided OP. Alisons given you great words to say now its to you to live out your learning with sincerity and build trust with a new employer. But your friends profession means you often cant share these types of things with her because of other peoples perceptions about it they dont know your friend, and while she may take off the record seriously, some journalists dont and your coworkers have no way of knowing which type of journalist she is. People find new jobs after being fired all the time. As a government employee she would have been trained on that rule and should have fully understood the ramifications of breaking it. A few weeks ago I worked on a medical chart for A Big Rockstar, but not only do I get fired if I tell anyone which one, I get fired if I open up a single page of his chart that I cant explain, if asked, what the exact and specific work-related reason for opening that page was. Me too in Government. Even a private company would consider this a breach of trust, and could could consider firing. I agree. Yes, I did filing in a small-town law office where almost every name was familiar and nothing I read or saw left the office. Of course, its your fault but it is only human to be annoyed with someone, especially someone who seemed to completely misrepresent what happened. Im now turning my head sideways and re-reading/rethinking. Between that and having family members who have been laid off and lost access to their work account that they used for personal use as well, I have learned to keep work and personal email accounts separate. It's really just a 30 . If I had an employee that did this, Id expect them to be mortified and I would expect to hear how seriously they were going to take embargoes from here on out, and the LWs letter and response are almost the exact opposite. According to Tessian research, over half (58%) of employees say they've sent an email to the wrong person. It was super not personal, it was just a situation were second chances were not given, period. I got fired due to sending an email by mistake to the wrong person that had someone else's credit card information in - Answered by a verified Employment Lawyer . The mistake may not have been trusting the friend with that information, but it was definitely telling her. Its the Im still pretty upset that I had no second chance, but I suppose I just lost their trust. that did it for me (especially after all the ways the OP dodged responsibility in the original letter). I just think it serves OP to choose a more benign explanation because it will help OP deal with the fall out of the situation going forward. Normally it can be resolved by contacting the person you wrote to by mistake, and get in writing that they have deleted it without doing anything with it. If you feel uncomfortable about a work rule you are clearly violating, your coworkers are not going to be thrilled that you get them out there on the plank with you. Ive seen many workplaces that dont spend an amount of time discussing confidentiality that is commensurate with its importance, or that dont go into specifics about when it is and isnt ok to tell somebody something you heard at work, and a general statement tends not to hold up to the in-the-moment excitement of oooooh I know THING about CELEBRITY! or whatever. Contact the GDPR manager at once. 27 April 2021. A very long-term employee who did excellent work, as a joke, made up a fake news release that indicated we got the contract. I think its fair for you to be upset that you didnt have another chance, but also understandable that your employer felt it couldnt give you one. If theyd covered up for her/not removed her access to confidential info and she did it again, their jobs would be on the line too the next time. Because I can almost guarantee that your reputation in that organization would never recover, even if you had remained employed. Its very dangerous to OPs professional reputation to assume OP can trust anyone who is unauthorized, including a good friend, with embargoed information. Yep. I love my younger co-workers and value their fresh take on things and energy, but there is a clear pattern of not understanding reputation risk and liability. They looked at themselves as an organization and realized that the damage was irrevocable. Yeah, I once got fired and I have always framed it as being fired for one thing I said in a meeting, but the truth is, I really got fired for not apologizing for saying the one thing. And in the future if you really cant hold something in (that is not full on illegal to discuss) and want to share it with your spouse or something, dear God dont ever do it in writing! "Yes, humor in the workplace is a fabulously invaluable thing that any workplace can benefit greatly from, but when your colleagues already feel buried under a pile of never-ending emails, adding. OP, its great that you trusted your friend enough to be confident that she wouldnt share what you told her. Ive had the occasional day when Ive really wanted to tell someone I met X today! Well its possible your coworker just had it out for you, but it sounds more likely that she genuinely misunderstood or that she understood perfectly but thought leaking info to a journalist friend was serious enough to report and then it was your boss who misunderstood the details. As easily as one of them knowing OP uses Slack to contact reporters and assuming I told a journalist friend or I told Rain (who they know is a journalist, possibly on that channel), anything but I texted a (journalist) friend meant OP went the usual Slack route. Yeah it totally sucks but now you at least have a chance to start fresh. Communications professionals are privy to so many deals and information that cant be divulged to even spouses until they become public. I wonder LW, would your interactions with the higher ups have been different if your co-worker/mentor had given you the heads up that she was going to have to report this? What!!! It is ok to be upset at the coworker but it is important to recognize that she did nothing wrong and is not a rat. I dont mean to sound harsh but you really need to break out of this frame of mind. I was sent home, and then fired over the phone a few hours later. 911 Dispatcher Fired for Privacy Violation - HIPAA Journal But if I found out a coworker was sharing this information with just anyone it would be a probably HIPAA violation and, yes, I would need to tell my boss. Its always easier, at least to me, to close your mouth than open it. As a fellow human being, I absolutely get the impulse to tell someone about something! Almost every situation I know of where someone was fired for cause was presented publically as a position elimination.. Not me. I had the same thoughtthat was very unwise. I am assuming you had a clearance of at least Secret. While the 911 caller believes criminal charges are appropriate, that is a matter for the district attorney to decide. (the confessional? If you cant keep your mouth shut then you need a new line of work. I have also had to recommend the firing of a personal friend. exciting! While it clearly appears LW would not have done any of this, the regulations and policies are written to protect the employer and coworker from any potential negative actions. You may not even realise your mistake until the person you meant to send the message to says they didn't receive it (or you have a flurry of missed phone calls, as in Serena Williams . If it comes across like you dont think it was a big deal or that you blame the coworker for alerting your employer, thats not going to go over well. If I were you, I would examine WHY I decided to tell my journalist friend the info. it really should be I made a foolish mistake, Its more a case of I broke the rules bigtime and expected someone else to cover up for me.. People just seemed to forget that with Epic, even one second of accessing a chart is recorded. That was a stressful week for all concerned. You can avoid finding yourself in this position by double-checking the recipient email address (especially when autocomplete is involved), the cc field, and the Bcc field. It may help in your next position to transpose your thinking around these things a bit. I think she was trying to lessen some of the guilt she felt, but really she should have just sat with that feeling and let it fuel her resolve to never share confidential info with an outside party again. Organisations can set up static rules (for example, you can send emails to business A but not business B), but these traditional methods are rigid and unreliable. Just wanted to point out that OP said they worked in the government, so while yours might be the public understanding of confidential, it wouldnt apply to anything their job considered confidential. You got a hard hit, and I am sorry for all the difficulty that causes. He was employed elsewhere within a few weeks. OPs best bet is to stop blaming their coworker or minimizing what happened. how did HR and OPs boss come to the conclusion that this information was spread through Slack (!) It doesnt matter if it was text or Slack, a single journalist or a whole group. They did exactly the right thing to you. I would feel terrible about it, definitely, and probably think about it for a while after, but ultimately, Id need to prioritize my family and act in a way that would protect my job/salary/health insurance so I could continue to provide for my them. LW doesnt seem defensive at all here, and its okay to feel upset while still taking ownership of their actions. This reminds me of the story of the Apple employee who left a prototype iPhone in a bar by mistake, before the official release. Im in public relations/global communications. (The fact that your friend is a journalist makes it particularly egregious.) Where did you go from here? I think people are reading defensiveness from the qualifiers probably and suppose. I can sympathize that this is still very raw for OP and perspective will only come with more time. Third, with bright line rules, we cannot adopt situational ethics where its ok to disclose to close-trusted-journalist-friend because we trust them. Yeah, its like that line from Horton Hears A Who. And youre a risk, on top of having done a fireable offense. You would never want someone to find out from the news media that they no longer have a job, for example. Ive only had a very general idea of what my husband does since 2002, because he cant tell me. The secretary is going to be featured at [cool upcoming event]! It makes her someone with morals and a respect for her employer. It would have been a ticking timebomb for them, and the next time it could have leaked beyond the friend. Bank Sends Sensitive E-mail to Wrong Gmail Address, Sues Google What if another journalist saw the email over your friends shoulder? can you get fired for accidentally sending confidential information