So. 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 the answer is Yes then say that. I dont mean to sound harsh but you really need to break out of this frame of mind. While I dont think the LW should be endlessly flagellating herself, this was her fault, not the co-worker. It made it seem like some part of OP still feels hard done by, rather than really getting it. 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. 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. But you should try to understand how this happened (why that friend? I came here to say this. Like you said, it was a breach and thats serious on a professional level (your friend is a journalist, too! Everything the OP described sounds like a non-public record. I constantly have journalist friends asking for confidential tips, and there is no way I would ever give up any information. So I guess my coworker could have misunderstood when I said I texted one friend, but I wish she would have talked to me about that first? In addition to 100% needing to own it when asked about it, I think OP may also benefit from focusing the job search on jobs that dont involve handling sensitive or high profile information. ), Im guessing it was something more like: Oh, so LW cant keep a secret from her reporter friend or her coworker, but were ragging on the coworker for not keeping LWs secret? That makes the violation much worse. Almost every situation I know of where someone was fired for cause was presented publically as a position elimination.. Even innocuous-sounding information, like the name of a database, can be a huge security risk. Those usually come out the morning of the speech. At the same time, though, its a program the average American would likely never have heard of and would give less than a crap about. If someone stole money from their workplace, or illegally harassed a coworker, and their colleague reported it would that person be a rat too? Disclosing Government information to a journalist (even a friend in confidence) without permission is a major breach of confidence and Im not surprised it resulted in a significant sanction. Email violations can jeopardize your job. OP can come up with steps to fix the real problem in their future jobs, but they cant really fix an evil coworker. Not because my coworker ratted me out, but because I came to her for guidance and instead of being straight with me, she made me think it would be OK only to be questioned hours later. If there were excetions, that would be explicitly stated. When it came up during her interview, the candidate said it was complex and that shed learned from it. Thats the wrong lesson to learn. But what might walk that back to a performance plan would be a sincere, unqualified apology showing understanding of the gravity of the error. It doesnt matter if it was text or Slack, a single journalist or a whole group. But I think in order to talk about this with future employers, youve got to take more responsibility for it. But leadership has to know that if they share confidential material with us that it will stay confidential. You did a thing that caused this outcome. And it is so hard! How to not get fired from work for what you post or send online: Make sure your Facebook and social media accounts are locked down. But that was the right response to what you did. I understand that the breach was very bad and that the organization needed to take some disciplinary action, but it seems to me that firing an employee who fessed up to something like this to a senior coworker sends the message: If you mess up bad enough, dont tell anyone. I am very sure they didnt want to fire him. LW best of luck! Thank you for following up with Alison and here in the comments, and Im sorry for what youre going through. Thats a big deal. She shared it with a friend. 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. and sent to multiple people (!!)? We all developed what we called the [cityname] twitch of looking over our shoulders before we talked about work stuff in a public place. Thats real life. Thats the very last reporting step for something illegal/dangerous. If when when LW talked to their boss, they conveyed the sense that theyre thinking Whats the big deal, its all fine, the coworker who ratted me out sucks, I did it once and Id do it again but next time I wouldnt self-report to my coworker the boss would probably be unwilling to give a second chance, whereas a oh shit I screwed up, heres what Im going to do to make sure this never happens again could have gotten one. Lack of integrity. Sure, thered be a record in Slack of prior messages. 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. But, its important for an employer to know that you understand the need for reporting and would report things yourself if needed. I think she got paid in sandwiches and the knowledge she was the only woman to neck with Nero Wolfe, though. Yeah, I thought it was from her personal cell too. 4) The coworker was absolutely right to report the breach in confidentiality. Ah! and sent to multiple people (!!)? If you had the same role in a public company, you could have have been fired because of regulations preventing insider trading. So for instance when I got an emergency grant from a water supplier for a woman with no income, there wasnt any risk that telling my wife would identify the woman. (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.). Just because a story wasnt published about it doesnt mean it wasnt discussed internally among coworkers. 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. Same-sex marriage is going to be legalized tomorrow!. We cannot do our job with our leaders if they cannot trust us. *(assuming that you did so)* She covers a totally different subject area so it never even crossed my mind that her career would be an additional conflict. There are lots of situations in which leaking information to a journalist would absolutely be the right thing to do, and we should absolutely encourage it in those cases. It simply means that your employees are not to disclose proprietary information or data about your company to another person without your consent. Email DLP: A key investment management tool. You can do this, if you keep working hard on yourself. The best answers are voted up and rise to the top, Not the answer you're looking for? Its understandable youre upset, but I wouldnt have given you a second chance either. Your coworker was probably legally obligated to report this, and even is she wasnt this is the type of breach that reasonable people WILL report. Or when she builds a pattern of sharing harmless information until suddenly it isnt harmless? Minimizing it will make it harder for future employers to trust OP, whereas frank ownership and an action plan will read as much more responsible and accountable. This is a bad enough screw-up that I would be contemplating a career change, or at least a pivot to an area of communications where things like confidential information and media embargoes arent ever a factor. This was a person whose reviews had been glowing up until that moment and I am sure they are still upset that this came out of the blue. Sharing HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL info. 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. a. problem then you APOLOGIZE and APOLOGIZE rather than defend yourself. Or the surrounding land if its something that will raise property values. It wasnt particularly kind to her friend, either. This is what I wanted to say but you said it better. All rights reserved. Oh honey UGH you are just the worst. Yeah it totally sucks but now you at least have a chance to start fresh. e.g. Heres what to do. No. In my experience, it was highly effective. Yes, own it. I dont even share work release information (good or bad) early with my spouse. Even though shes made the same mistake 2 times). But heres the thing you still have to have a ton of discretion about how you share and where. I feel like this misses the overall lesson Allison is trying to impart here. If something like this would help, maybe try it. Theres no way your managers could safely assign other confidential projects to you after leaking the information on this project. I work in retail, and the company has yearly mandatory training on How to handle confidential info. Given how much we have learned about foreign intelligence operations in American social media in the last few years, this is yet another reason why information security of all levels is taken so seriously. 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 not going to spell out what it was, but it was completely unethical and immoral, and shes lucky her license wasnt permanently revoked for it. This is one reason why I could only ever give a vague explanation of what my dad did. You want to minimize this, and thats natural. Under the "General" tab, you'll see a section called "Undo send.". Your coworker didnt choose to know this information and does not owe you silence. 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. If you cant keep a secret, this is not a field you should be in. Lack of the maturity to keep exciting news to onesself. And definitely let go any butthurt about your coworker they did nothing wrong and followed clear policies on reporting this incident. I was wondering the same thing. Am I likely to be rehired after being fired for misconduct? So, I can talk about it, I can say Omg, there was one scene that I was just like SuperCheese! and rolling my eyes. So, he learns about things at the same time as the public, and he just knows when Im extra busy because theres a big release coming, or someone messed something up, etc. I always appreciate your combination of kindness and firm clarity. They are designed to trick the recipient . Count your blessings that you just got fired. That said, I am curious if theres other context that explains why they fired you for a first offense without warning you first. I hope there are things at your job that are exciting to you! Or that might not make a difference on how its interpreted. This seems unnecessarily condescending, and I dont think the LW sounds defensive here at all. An example: If that is so, there is nothing you can do to avoid the termination and you should be looking for new employment. You still have to go through the same information request as someone who doesnt work there. But he either kept it so vague as to be useless or said nothing at all. 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. Sometimes when we receive an email meant for someone else, its just spam. If anyone required training to answer FALSE! In other words, this whole line of discussion is moot. In 2014 or so, I once slapped a superior in the face because they were yelling in my face because I was stepping on freshly mopped floors. And youre being very generous toward the coworker in saying she misunderstood and mistakenly misrepresented it. And I did use Slack on my work computer, and I did interact professionally with some journalists who covered my area over Slack. Some are minor, some are devastating. I have also had to recommend the firing of a personal friend. 1) Broke a rule The z department is not allocating the staff they promised. It also protects the coworker from any immediate threats or retribution by LW. How you analyze the situation and internalize the lesson is more important than wording for future employers right now. 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. 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. No, no, no, no, no. Another public sector worker here. While it is possible the line could be actively tapped/monitored by someone else, even if it was an unsecured line it would be reasonable to assume the home phone number on file for GSA's dad would lead to the dad. They must always assume the worst case anyway. Like I said, very strange but its worked for me. Request a personalized demo to see how Egress Prevent will help you prevent data breaches over email. OP notes that she is a government employee. I got defensive and young from OPs response. The mistake may not have been trusting the friend with that information, but it was definitely telling her. The first job will be the hardest but gradually you are less and less likely to be asked about an older job. Dan is such a pain! The heads on spikes of the modern workplace. I actually think your big mistake was telling your coworker, not telling a trusted friend. I have been fired for a dumb mistake. Where the investigation uncovers evidence of divulging confidential information, then the employer should take formal action. I agree that the companys response was wrong the sexual harasser should have been fired but in the US, authority doesnt care. 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. Ratted me out annoys me too, because it just means that someone told the truth and wouldnt cover for your lie. And even more so in ballistic missile submarines! Some offenses are so serious that you immediately get fired. Long since past, now.). I just want to remind people that it happened. So, you've accidentally sent an email to the wrong person. Then your story isnt just I did something wrong, they found out, and I got fired, its I did something wrong, I knew it was a mistake and told a senior member of my team about it, and as a result I got fired. The more you can acknowledge that you took responsibility for your mistake, the better it sounds for a potential employer. Thats totally true, and when I worked for state government release of confidential information would have been grounds for immediate termination, but Alison is the only one who calls it confidential, OP calls it non-public. 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. Log the incident in an 'cyber accident book'. Please banish the phrase ratted out from your vocabulary and thinking. This is NOT a myob type situation at all. Its also important to note that OP called it non-public and Alison was the person who called it confidential. While it's not always easy to identify the cause for leakage of information, it's important to try to find the security vulnerabilities that make your information less secure. If it keeps happening, you can report the sender as junk or spam to block future messages. Which is actually good most of us get making a mistake when were young, and really learning from it. Your coworker was not at all in the wrong here, OP. A while back I had a coworker/friend who created a memo, for our company A, all based on publicly available information, along with suggestions and comments by the coworker. Resist the temptation to gossip about fellow employees and don't express your disdain for your. They are pretty free with stating exactly why someone was fired. But I had a boss who always used to try to cover his ass 110%. Thats why they told you the information was confidential. This. Im more curious about what KIND of exciting information it was. A statement added: 'Irish Ferries crews train regularly to deal with incidents at sea, and the company has put its training into action and the fire has been extinguished. Yes, this is the valuable lesson about how precarious trust is and how breaking it can have swift painful consequences! 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. Its no worse than our organization doesnt protect classified information no matter how badly an employee disregards policies. And I dont think it helps the OP to say that she doesnt have the right to have feelings of resentment toward the coworker. Thanks for answering! 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. There are many ways to say thing like this without lying. Im not trying to teach her a lesson, necessarily, she seems to have gotten the point. In my first job out of college in the insurance industry I reinstated someones coverage without verifying that they had had no claims in the lapsed period they immediately called claims and filed a $40,000 claim. I think its also something to do with the fact that if you tell a journalist something newsworthy, youre not just talking, youre offering a thing of (potential) value, which is an entirely different action from sharing news with a friend.
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