(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) Maybe you havent worked with, or known anyone whos worked with, sunshine law and right-to-know, but this is incredibly serious for anyone who has. This is just an opportunity to choose words that allow for the most generous possible interpretation (similar to how you say with a friend rather than with a journalist). 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. I work for a state government agency and FOIA is a really big deal. Best of luck, and believe us all when we tell you that if you sound at all dismissive of the seriousness of this, prospective employers will (rightfully) worry that you may have a similar lapse in judgement again. It was super not personal, it was just a situation were second chances were not given, period. They must always assume the worst case anyway. should I be so emotionally drained by managing? UK officials are bound by the provisions of the Official Secrets Act and people have gone to prison for giving information to journalists before now. I dont know, I think thats overstating. 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). Its ridiculous how much a speculator can get from very little information, and this is why keeping anything secret until it is announced is important. 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. Candidate must then come up with a good reason why former employer wont re-hire given they merely eliminated the position. Noooooo. In a couple of hours, the news agencies were calling the federal government, to verify the news. So please think about that aspect when youre thinking about how she ratted you out. OP, you truly buried the lede: you leaked to a journalist. the coworker? She knew about a leak and didnt say anything, who knows what else she is helping to hide, My boss, in a well meaning way and to correct some weird barriers previously put in place by the person before him, told me openly that if Big Boss [aka the owner] asks you anything, just answer him, its all good, you dont need to filter things through me or anything., And I just tilted my head and laughed at him saying Even if you told me differently, I would tell him whatever he wants to know. Which given our relationship he just giggled and responded with of course and thats the way it should be.. Period. Draft your UI forms and pre-write your objection to his unemployment on the grounds of "good cause" firing for willful misconduct- Then after all that you can fire him. The reason all this info is locked down tightly is so that they can control the message when it goes out. And then they did it again. The person is trying to make someone else feel bad about their own transgressions. You are disappointed you didnt get a second chance. 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. But what you were effectively asking your employer to do is trust a totally unknown (to them) journalist not to publish something that was apparently such exciting news that you, bound by confidentiality, simply couldnt keep quiet about it. She was understandably very uncomfortable with what I did, and we had a very nice conversation about our duties as communication officers, and trust, etc. I think people beat themselves up enough internally without us having to do it for them most of the time. 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. The point of the story is the funny way people behave. 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. She has to protect her job and reputation as well in the end, she shouldnt have to risk her own job stability due to your choices! If I were in the coworkers position, I would need to do the same thing. Or you mistyped her email by one letter and it went to a colleague who had no reason to respect the embargo? Im sorry but it would definitely be a good idea to recognise that this is a really big deal and learn from it. I doubt she had it out for you and rather was worried you confided a big breech to her which could adversely affect the company. This is what I wanted to say but you said it better. Got my first job. I am really jaw-on-the-floor stunned at people taking aim at the coworker. Although paragraph (b) (2) does not require the lawyer to reveal the client's misconduct, the lawyer may not counsel or assist the client in conduct the lawyer knows is criminal or fraudulent. Per my story above, when I made the mistake that I was fired for, I did take responsibility at the time, and they fired me anyway. And if we do, well tell them not to tell anyone.. Or does it only matter that I broke a rule? Yep. There was no warning, no suspension, nothing. In some cases, there can even be criminal charges for knowingly releasing certain information. Heck, at my agency were cautioned to not use work email on our personal devices (unless were management or its an emergency) because records requests could potentially get our personal devices as well. Maybe a different (and appropriately mortified) approach from the OP in those meetings would of had a different result or maybe not! but the approach in the letter definitely would have convinced me to let her go if I was on the fence. And being mad at them is an effort to dodge responsibility and ownership of the actions that WERE at fault. Same here. And not even trusting her not to publish it, but what if SHE got so excited by the news, just as LW did, that she just had to tell someone, and she picked someone that she trusted implicitly, and told them in strict confidence. The penalty for breach of confidentiality isn't restricted to employees who have . Accept responsibility for what you did. Yes, this is the way to do it: Friend, I just got the best news at work, I am so excited! If you are facing much trouble, look for job in domains where confidentiality is not too critical and the employer is not paranoid about it. obviously i cant know that for sure though. I have been fired for a dumb mistake. You just seem to still want an answer and I picked up on this as a possible avenue to reflect on in your letter. You can never rely on people to be 100% trustworthy, no matter how long youve known them. You kind of glaze over this, OP, but if you spoke in this meeting as you did here then I wonder if thats the real reason for the firing. The thing is though, you dont get credit for leaking to a trustworthy person who decides not to hang you out to dry. Yes, some employer will bin you, others might give you a second chance. Government tends to operate differently. And this will definitely have an effect on how you come across to people interviewing you in future. Maybe OPs workplace does the same? My (unclear) point is that there are some options for OP that extend beyond you can never share anything before its public with anyone ever and completely change career tracks.. Any info I pull, I have to be able to explain why I pulled it and what I was doing with it. assigning women extra work to help them, calling out when youre in the ER, and more. You certainly don't need to blurt out a 5 minute monologue unprompted, but you do want to be ready to answer these questions because they will come up if you disclose what happened as you intend to. Based on the post its probably public now, so I would guess its likely not too exciting. Its very possible that LW could think what happened to me wasnt totally fair and still accept full responsibility for it during interviews (which is obviously the smart thing to do). 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. No! Or they might have a zero-tolerance policy for leaks as a deterrent. President issuing an executive order on (issue the agency deals with) I question that there are no details about your Monday meeting with HR here. How do I go about asking for a job on another team? 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. But it sounds like it doesnt really matter that HR jumbled the details because neither was a permitted thing to do anyway. And if it is a part of that, the coworker was obligated to report it! 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. Your former job will probably only verify your employment unless you broke a governmental regulation. Best wishes! That, and I never slapped another plucky again. The US is a large jurisdiction, and generally have what I consider very little protection for private data. But your wording indicates that you dont yet have insight into just how much you breached the trust of your company. But there was no way we were actually going to get the contract now if they didnt. People leak or share things to journalists they know all the time, with agreements by those journalists on how to share it. I have a friend whose mother did work for an intelligence agency during WW2. Just because a story wasnt published about it doesnt mean it wasnt discussed internally among coworkers. (Plus, were not sure how much of the inflation came from the coworker and how much came from their superiors. And there are reasons the rule is dont leak, rather than dont leak (except to people youre *really sure* wont tell any one else (except people who they are really sure they wont tell anyone else (except people theyre absolutely positive wont tell anyone else))). Many Government Agencies have specific rules about reference checks. Regardless of what word you use when you disclose what happened, understanding that difference, owning up to it, and showing how you've changed as a result is your best hope of gaining future employment. I actually think this was a little rough of her mentor. UK government has fired people for looking up records of contestants on reality TV series, multiple times. Thank you for explaining this! While they may not state why someone was fired, Ive found it pretty common to state that someone was fired (or laid off etc) and if the person is eligible for rehire. The LW actually had a responsibility to keep the info confidential, and the friend doesnt. Then the stories died down and the pressure with it even though there were still occasional leaks. Best of luck with your search. I strongly disagree with this. I replaced someone who had embezzled from the (small) company. No checking out salary information permitted! And most of the real socialising happened at house parties and dinner parties, not restaurants or bars. Whether or not you knew about the policy upfront, you need to be ready to discuss steps you take to stay informed about policies and ensure you're following them. If Jane knows, then it cant be too bad.. But what might walk that back to a performance plan would be a sincere, unqualified apology showing understanding of the gravity of the error. They would definitely see any mention of confidentiality breach as a huge red flag and drop OP from the hiring process at once. 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. I do have to wonder if the hospital failed to educate its employees on how freaking serious that kind of breach was, And also failed to inform them that the system tracks who looks up a particular patients record. and that person did what they were told to do and reported it. I might consider you as a candidate who truly gets it in a way that someone who hasnt been tried by fire might not. How do I make amends and go about apologizing to former manager(s) after being dismissed for gross misconduct? But imagine you are the government and someone leaked information. Gossage said he believed he was speaking in confidence to someone he trusted implicitly, but the story subsequently appeared in the Sunday Times, to the dismay and rage of the author of the Harry Potter books.. Lose that part of the defense completely, OP. High-profile thing the president wanted and agency employees opposed isnt going to happen You did a thing that caused this outcome. I dont know whether you meant it this way, but the co-worker is not untrustworthy for reporting this. Not saying you did this! From there they have 72 hours to resolve the situation. Oh yeah, my response wasnt to you it was just to continue what Alanna said. 3. There are people who would refuse to acknowledge their error and go about their lives being bitter and blaming others. I remember the line of people walked out the door for looking at OJ Simpsons records when he was arrested. Messages like this can simply be ignored and deleted. I consider it my greatest ethical obligation in my job, because I have been entrusted with sensitive information and I treat it like Id want mine to be treated. Its what you do with what you learn that is important. But I agree that reporting coworkers for actual errors that actually affect the company isnt ratting. And it doesnt sound to me as though the OPs coworker was in any way a rat. But OPs situation sounds like more of a case of I am just soooo excited about Cool Thing that I had to tell rather than something dangerous or corrupt is going on and the public should know.. Im not understanding how OPs update comment reads as defensiveit shows significant progression from deflection to ownership, to me. OP wasnt a journalist. Yeah, we dont want to go down the road if encouraging the OP to continue acting unethically that will ensure she stays unemployed. You know thats not how that works. Despite a good track record and being with this team for a few years now, the rules were made very clear to me and I know I wouldnt be given a second chance in that situation. If someone stole money from their workplace, or illegally harassed a coworker, and their colleague reported it would that person be a rat too? I also wanted to address a couple things that jumped out at me in this part: Also, am I even allowed to bring up the fact that someone ratted me out? The first job will be the hardest but gradually you are less and less likely to be asked about an older job. They thought it was funny and shared it with a couple more. But your processing of it has to be at one step removed. Some of the stuff I handle is really interesting logistically and historically but I just do not have the right to get carried away and share it. Yeah, I wish the mentor had walked the LW directly to the boss to discuss this openly. This is a tough lesson to learn. That brings us to your questions. Your second co-worker who sexually harassed a woman was put on a PIP? The fact that the LW just couldnt resist sharing this tidbit should have been a red flag that maybe her friend couldnt, either. We can't tell you the best way to answer, since the best way to answer is honestly and you're the only one who can give your honest answer. Employees who violate their companies' email policies can face penalties ranging from disciplinary action to termination. Request a personalized demo to see how Egress Prevent will help you prevent data breaches over email. 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. If OP had never confided in any coworker about what she had done, it would still not be blind-siding to be fired for it. Or well often hear from contacts on the Hill about something going on behind the scenes, like that a bill is about to be introduced. The LW blabbed, why would her friend have more self-control? Im not feeding a narrative, Im expressing my opinion. rev2023.3.3.43278. This disclosure was not inadvertent, and trying to frame it that way could backfire pretty hard. 2007-2023. For the other 2 questions, I would simply urge you to remove the phrase ratted out from your professional vocabulary. Or the surrounding land if its something that will raise property values. I doubt she is the only person that has ever done anything like this. I am in this place when I read OPs response. Thats a big deal. Now were just nitpicking the OPs words here. Don't be me, is what I'm saying I guess! Oh, dear. You didn't accidentally email the material to yourself, you did it on purpose. There could be Official Reasons, but it could also be something as simple as the coworker, while being made somewhat uncomfortable by this confidence originally, got more and more uncomfortable the more she thought about it. Ive been poking around in our payroll system for the last two weeks. If OP reasoned I told mentor, confident that there was NO WAY she would let anything slip it throws a lot of doubt on her parallel reasoning of how certain it was that the journalist wouldnt let anything slip. Same applies here as you stated. Moving on from that company is probably a mixed blessing. She broke a very real and important rule. She did her job. She already got that advice from Alison. But I dont think it helps OP to feed a narrative that prevents OP from owning the situation going forward. A true 100% owning of what you did. And then that coworker did tell someone, and she was fired. AND I told somebody within the company about that? Is there a solution to add special characters from software and how to do it. We've added a "Necessary cookies only" option to the cookie consent popup. never actually say the words Gross Misconduct. Hes in an unrelated field, it doesnt affect him at all, and he wouldnt really care outside of knowing whats going on in Eddies life but hes a chatterbox and theres a decent chance hed forget and say something to someone. One of the things your field requires is to be able to think and act dispassionately about the information you have custody over. (Especially since termination hearings and the related records are often public records once the employee is terminated, so any concerned employer could just do a records request and get the whole story.). I mean, yeah, absolutely! OP will also want to consider not focusing her career path on jobs that require a security clearance for classified information. So Id do what Alison says here, and save your OMG I cant keep this in confessions for your pets. Excellent points, especially LWs use of ratted out. Alison has said so many times that theres no tattling in the work world. Ive definitely been guilty of sharing exciting but not-yet-announced news with colleagues. You are right. If *you* got that carried away, you cant guarantee that she wont, either. Then, when someone particularly notable would enter our database, we would get a reminder email not naming names but reminding us that no matter how interesting the information is, its private and not ok to share. I just wasn't thinking at the moment I sent the information. To say my friend was mortified would be an understatement. Everything from whats going to be on sale for Black Friday, to customer financial data. But that was the right response to what you did. Not to mention if you tell a lie (even by omission), its a lie you have to keep up, indefinitely. This has to be, and often is, done formally, with agreements to give something secret in advance so the journalist can prep a story for later, when its OK to share. All people, of all ages, are capable of errors in judgment. Report and act quickly I used to work at a government agency and it was super hard to get fired so I can understand your consternation. I think it most likely would be very boring, but some stuff like the jobs report a few days early would be very interesting to unscrupulous investors. Since that didnt happen Im not surprised you werent given a second chance. Unless this job was the bulk of your experience, I would leave it off your resume. Yes! Thank you for following up with Alison and here in the comments, and Im sorry for what youre going through. A member of the public wants some data, they contact anybody in the agency they can think of, the internal employees bounce it around because somehow they dont know who to send data requests to, and finally it gets to us and we respond. Age is hardly an indicator of a persons ability to consistently make the best choices at all times. Yeah just assume that for the next few years youre out of the running for jobs that require a confidentiality. If I were you, I would examine WHY I decided to tell my journalist friend the info. Youve got some great feedback from Alison and I hope it all works out for you. All this said, I think Alisons approach is the best one when youre applying for jobs. That doesnt mean youre a horrible person who should never work again! I am a veteran employee in good standing, but if I shared Material NonPublic Information I learned on the job and was found out, I would be terminated immediately and they would be right to do so. Think of speaking with a colleague like speaking with your boss. It may be that the decision is made and it is just a matter of time before you are gone. I think interviewers will pick up on the equivocation in your language here. 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. She could have been a secretary or a spy; no one knows because she went to her grave never telling anyone, not even her husband. For the purposes of VIWI, a confidential client shall be able to establish a mutually authenticated TLS channel with the auth server and resource service, providing a trusted identity, usually in the form of a certificate signed by . Telling the trusted friend was the fireable offense. "You can call or text and say, 'Call me, you were sent the wrong information.' " She recalls one time when a co-worker accidentally sent an email calling a client a "tough cookie" to the. Im so paranoid about it, that I only talk about what the company has already shared publicly. That was a stressful week for all concerned. I have also had to recommend the firing of a personal friend. I say dont lie during any part of the job application. Dont disagree feelings arent wrong but the way we think about them often is. No, no, no, no, no. As others have noted, it probably isnt anything especially exciting. Absolutely this. Thats real life. I deal with it by having friends in the firm who I can say it to (but not in a bar!). However, I will agree that, per OPs statement, the information appears to be unsolicited and doesnt seem like it would have been considered a records request (who knows, we dont have a lot of information and what we have has been proven to be distorted). (Most companies that use these kinds of scanners dont let employees know. Its like pain (heck, it IS pain); its telling you something important. Besides the stuff that has already been discussed upthread like potential for insider trading, unfair advantage in things like competing for federal contracts or grants, or derailing a communications strategy, one of the biggest reasons to keep work information private is due to counterintelligence concerns. I thoughtlessly mentioned an embargoed announcement to a longtime friend in journalism before it was public. Yeah, this is a big part of it. Oh, I wish Id seen this before replying. When I was a journalist I did not appreciate people giving me tips I couldnt use! Of course, it wasnt your mistake and youre under no legal obligation to do anything at all. Im also miffed by the fact that the coworker kinda blind sided OP. Keep rewriting what happened in the most factual, dispassionate way possible. OP should be counting their blessings they only got fired and be upset with themselves for making such an obvious and preventable error, not expecting a large bureaucracy to break its own rules to accommodate them. They may very well have not had the option to give you a second chance, whether you wanted to or not. I was then let go but will be extremely vigilant in the future to never let this happen again. Yep, I have a friend whose grandmother was a codebreaker and took loose lips sink ships seriously till her dying day. Your tone is very this wasnt a big deal and I shouldnt have been fired for it, when it really should be I made a foolish mistake which I deeply regret and Ive definitely learned my lesson. There is a greater issue here regarding judgement. After all, nobody wants to tell their manager that they might (however accidentally) be responsible for a data breach. How risky is sending a sensitive work email to the wrong person? Does that matter? Feelings are frequently conflated with facts in our minds and it can take some work to separate them. It doesnt matter if your friend is a journalist or not; thats a total red herring. I encourage you to spend some time really thinking about this and absorbing the very good feedback you have generally received here. Im a publicist. Your coworker was not at all in the wrong here, OP. Quite recently, a client of my firm contacted us to say they had heard staff in a bar gossiping about another client. Judgement errors tend to repeat themselves. I dont love not being able to tell her things (even though we are each others I promise not to tell anybody (but Friend) person), the way we share this information is by forwarding press releases once the information is public. If someone had been privy to the list of cities prior to the announcement, and leaked it, they would 100% have been fired. (Even before learning it was to a reporter!) Journalists discuss things all the time that dont make it into published stories, or make it into stories that get killed, or get used for shaping further investigation, or even just as gossip. Or even if you sit at the bar and the llama design keeps crossing your mind and you talk before you think. I thought it was over. I once interviewed someone with a great resume but had switched specialties within the field. Access rules are very, very strict, and there are reminders all the time.
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