Any of our PR folks would be immediately fired. The best workplace I ever saw in this regard was a law firm that specializes in foreclosure (I am not a lawyer, but I worked there in another capacity). 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). Thats when it gets tricky. Certainly not an electronic blog. As someone who works in PR/comms, my recommendation is to tell future employers the truth and emphasize what youve learned: Non-public just because it hadnt been announced yet isnt the same as the location of the emergency bunker. Honestly this feels well intentioned but not right. Maybe you get a 2nd chance IF you were contrite enough and blamed your excitement at the new teapot program. 9 Posts. What happened is reputation-ruining for such jobs so re-assessing what is realistic in terms of job expectations after this is important to moving on successfully As Brett said, there was definitely a record in this case. And sometimes at shows they dont identify themselves as press immediately. It may be unfair to assume a journalist is cutthroat and would kill for a lead, but its also nave to assume they wouldnt let anything slip to the exact wrong person. Honest Mistake: Have You Ever Shared Sensitive Data to the Wrong Person? Leaking information can actually be the right thing in some cases. You're fired for violation but convince the Dept of Labor that no one without an IT degree could ever understand your policy. Excellent points, especially LWs use of ratted out. Alison has said so many times that theres no tattling in the work world. It might just be that the scanners caught it and notified security. Companies (and governments) want to carefully manage the messaging and strategy around information that is released in order to bring the biggest buzz and the best information to the public. I wish I lived in your country. You cant even take a look at *your own* records if you are also a patient at the medical facility. For a market where most of this stuff lives in a big way for one season, and then only has some ongoing staying power? Oof this is so condescending! It helps you to catch context-driven mistakes such as adding the wrong recipient, attaching the wrong file, or forgetting to use Bcc instead of cc. How do I politely turn down the call for an interview by another employer? You did wrong, fessed up, and got fired anyway. Even though shes made the same mistake 2 times). High-profile thing the president wanted and agency employees opposed isnt going to happen This is an issue in most fields. They fell prey to the Its just a quick peek and it wont hurt anybody fallacy. 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. Its very dangerous to OPs professional reputation to assume OP can trust anyone who is unauthorized, including a good friend, with embargoed information. (i hope this story still makes sense with all identifying details purged, but hopefully its clear from context uh why i am purging all those details smdh) Theres no context where calling a stranger honey doesnt feel condescending (whether someone intends it to or not!). Assuming OP was correct and journalist friend never would have said anything, OP could have pretended it never happened. Employees can't just post anything they want on Facebook or anywhere else. 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. But what might walk that back to a performance plan would be a sincere, unqualified apology showing understanding of the gravity of the error. Coworker Dorcus, who used to write down what time the rest of us got in each morning so she could report to our supervisor when the rest of us were late, even though he hadnt asked her to, even though Dorcus had no idea when wed left the night before, how late we were working that day, or what arrangement we had with our supervisor? On other occasions, you might accidentally receive a confidential email with information meant for one person (or a few people) you know. As far as I know, he held the highest security clearance a civilian could have. Im sorry but it would definitely be a good idea to recognise that this is a really big deal and learn from it. And then there are things you cannot even hint at under any circumstances. I had friends who would jokingly-semi-serious ask me if I was poking around their accounts and such while I was working there and I would deadpan look at them and say your finances and personal information isnt interesting enough to lose my job over and then change the subject. 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. I had not thought about this issue via this lens, but I think youre 100% right. Here's how you fix that horrible email blunder on the job - New York Post When I asked about the job move he said he had failed to make a required disclosure on a sale and so was fired, but how he took it to heart and had behaved since. 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). Good luck with your job search! My guess is thats where some of the defensiveness in the initial letter comes from that no one would have known if not for the self-report. I feel your pain. Even though he loves the MCU and would have enjoyed the anecdotes. Those who work in circumstances that require them learn how to filter through multiple layers of risk when they get to a point where they come up against that need to share. Absolutely this. And off the record requests from journalists arent mandated by law. Monitoring should not be excessive and the employee must know what will and won't be caught, for example, whether personal emails will be read. If yes, that is relevant to the question. Regardless of what the coworker did, ideally we want to nudge OP toward exercising greater impulse control and discretion if OP wants to have a successful career in the same sector/field. I think if the OP had framed the situation as, how can I get another job after being fired for being a whistleblower after I shared important but unfortunately confidential information with a journalist because the public has a right to know, these comments would be very different. That brings us to your questions. The company would have thought everything was hunky dory, but they would have employee on staff who did not understand confidentially requirements. 2007-2023. This violates workplace compliance and trust. If her friend never told anyone it never would have gotten out. For the other 2 questions, I would simply urge you to remove the phrase ratted out from your professional vocabulary. Or, maybe they totally overreacted, who knows its impossible to say from here. I work in the auto industry in media communications. I felt as defensive and upset as you. Can you get fired for a PERSONSAL email accidentally sent to a coworker Im assuming the LW plead their case and filled in relevant information. OP, Im sure in your excitement you truly didnt think there was anything wrong with telling your friend, someone you trust implicitly to remain discreet. I say dont lie during any part of the job application. Yes. People find new jobs after being fired all the time. Fwiw the journalist agreed to destroy the info. I encourage you to get involved with PRSA. The awareness that anything sent in your work email is subject to FOIA and open records requests really varies. (And even then, the existence of the record has to be disclosed even if the actual record is not disclosed. Hind-sight is 20/20, but the LW should have thought twice about sharing that leaked incident with any coworker, especially a mentor who likely would be obligated to let the higher-ups know. FOIA and open records requests are really big deals. 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. If you can trust someone, you can trust them, journalist or not. Egress Software Technologies Ltd. Find out what you should do when a misdirected email lands in your inbox. But I cant talk about the specifics of that scene. Its also something that happens in a business relationship rather than a personal one, because the assumption is that personal relationships are entirely off the record. The terminology is often not eligible for rehire., And every time Ive ever given a formal reference, that has been one of the questions: Would you hire her again? or Is she eligible for rehire?. You are fortunate to get the opportunity to learn it early when it hasnt resulted in severe long term consequences. Some are minor, some are devastating. 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. Judgement errors tend to repeat themselves. Does that matter? A number of US governmental agencies specifically require that the co-worker NOT tell LW that she will be reporting this to management. I remind people about once a year that not only can I not look up their medical info on my own, I cant look it up even if they ask me to, and I get in even more trouble if I look up my own medical info. OP notes that she is a government employee. I think in both cases, part of the concern is this retroactive removal of risk. Is there a solution to add special characters from software and how to do it. Right. It was a couple of telling E-mails that helped bring down Bear Stearns with the subprime loan mess crashing . And I think you can share your excitement with others, just not the information. So while the OP can feel what the OP feels, the sooner she can get rid of any hostile feelings about the coworker, the better it will be for the OP. The fact that the LW just couldnt resist sharing this tidbit should have been a red flag that maybe her friend couldnt, either. Some projects you could talk about with a trusted friend as long as you didnt get specific, but shouldnt announce on twitter. Same-sex marriage is going to be legalized tomorrow!. I wouldnt lead with it, but I wouldnt hide it either if it ever comes up, and folks will likely ask about why youve left past jobs. The fact that you were surprised and angry (to the point of calling her a rat, essentially) speaks to the fact that you actually do NOT know who you can expect to keep things secret, at least not as well as you think. The reason all this info is locked down tightly is so that they can control the message when it goes out. Thank you for pointing this out! This makes it seem like they owe LW something, to be loving and release her to her best life. 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. I might consider you as a candidate who truly gets it in a way that someone who hasnt been tried by fire might not. 2 July 2018 at 9:11PM. As a former journalist, I can assure you journalists dont leak information, unless its something confidential about their own employers. Send the attachment in a follow-up email and, in the future, attach the document before you even begin writing your email. Bye. I dont know whether you meant it this way, but the co-worker is not untrustworthy for reporting this. The message there is dont violate confidentiality policies. Were considering opening ours up to partner agencies, and I spent a good two hours cleaning up the old messages in the general chat. Journalists get embargoed or off-the-record information all the time and are able to play by those rules. Its what you do with what you learn that is important. Even if this person had not turned her in, there was this bomb just sitting there waiting to go off. I was sent home, and then fired over the phone a few hours later. In government, keep this confidential almost always means never share ever on pain of serious legal sanctions.. A fine of up to $100,000 and five years in jail is possible for violations involving false pretenses, and a fine of up to $250,000 and up to 10 years in jail is possible when HIPAA Rules have been violated for malicious reasons or for personal gain. Also, the OP wont be able to ever claim the good work experience she gained from the role. Many, many of us in similar positions have made similar mistakes. You hear something genuinely classified and blab it too because its so cool? In a couple of hours, the news agencies were calling the federal government, to verify the news. Interpretations, justifications, conceptualizations can also be wrong, surely. 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. Mostly, Im saying this to you so that you understand that you should never have trusted that co-worker to keep that kind of information to herself, no matter how much of a mentor shed been to you I do think that she should have told you that this was serious enough that she couldnt not report it. If someone stole money from their workplace, or illegally harassed a coworker, and their colleague reported it would that person be a rat too? It would probably breach a few laws in other European countries too. For me, it was like OK, she shared embargoed information something she shouldnt have. I agree that you can learn how to share without breaching confidentiality. It can be exciting to know whats going to happen before it happens, even when the news itself isnt *that* thrilling. One of my friends is working on projects that she cannot list on her resume now that shes applying to jobs and I only know that because Im looking at it and she told me shes frustrated because she has good work that she can quantify but cant talk about yet. I imagine optimal framing varies by industry and so Im not sure what to advise there. An in-person meeting might be more appropriate if you accidentally sent information about your plans to find another job to your manager. Rather than leading you on and allowing you to continue to work for them under a cloud of mistrust (and all the downsides that come with that), they made a clean break and released you to get a fresh start elsewhere. If its a marketing message, spam, or something that looks entirely unimportant simply delete and move on. can you get fired for accidentally sending confidential information ninkondi prime stance 3d parallax background mod apk latest version take me to st ives cambridgeshire can you get fired for accidentally sending confidential information. This is a tough lesson to learn. If you had stayed, they would never have trusted you again. Now were just nitpicking the OPs words here. I used to be a journalist, I have lots of friends who are journalists and I never tell them anything that I shouldnt, even the ones I really trust. 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. 4) The coworker was absolutely right to report the breach in confidentiality. They did exactly the right thing to you. Copyright 2007 - 2023 Ask A Manager. Theres beating themselves up, but then theres also understanding and feeling properly appalled that they did something really unconscionable.
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