NEVER by email unless explicitly given the go-ahead). This was more or less what I was thinking. First, you need to be able to frame what you did for yourself. So this. She got paid to pose as Roeders* mistress, once. Calling this victimless shows OP still doesnt have insight into their behavior. I mean, yeah, absolutely! You added nuance that I hadnt thought about. I disagree. Dont blame the co-worker for ratting you out. OP erred, which she knows, but I dont think that means her mentor no longer has the obligation to be honest with her. Things can be the way they are for understandable reasons and you can still feel like crap about it. Dec. 17, 2009 -- You probably don't think twice about sending personal messages through your work e-mail. My mother got a reference-check call recently regarding someone shed managed and then fired. Yes. 27 April 2021. OP came to her, she felt guilty, they apparently talked about this a bit, so why not tell her that this cant be kept secret and she has to come forward to her boss ? If I happened to expose that to my BIL who runs the comic book store and has a bunch of media and arts and entertainment contacts? The emotion is neutral; its what you do with it that counts. 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. Im still pretty upset that I had no second chance, but I suppose I just lost their trust.. All mom did was hand dad the phone. Messages like this can simply be ignored and deleted. Really? Lack of the maturity to keep exciting news to onesself. I have information that I have kept confidential for more than a decade that I know the patients wife does not even know (think undisclosed criminal record). 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. Yes, you can get fired for opening a phishing email. 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. It would probably breach a few laws in other European countries too. And depending on the circumstances, if the co-worker knew you broke the rules and didnt report it, then THEY could be in trouble also. You simply let the sender know you've received it by accident, then they can rectify their mistake and you can delete the email. Is it possible to rotate a window 90 degrees if it has the same length and width? 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. This will suck for a long time writing this post has made me feel anxious thinking about my own lapses and consequences from years ago but it all works out in the end. That being said, it doesnt change the fact that OP shouldnt have done it anyway, so harboring ill will towards this coworker is pointless. what did you want to get out of sharing with her? On the other hand maybe they didnt listen to her or believe her, and in that case shes been fired based on a misunderstanding but that doesnt help her because what she actually did wasnt OK either. Firing you was probably not what they wanted to do, and Im sorry. ! mode if she told me a general were harassing her, unless making this public is something shed want. FOIA and open records requests are really big deals. Misdirecting an email can be awkward. Employee Consequences for Breach of Confidentiality Im also miffed by the fact that the coworker kinda blind sided OP. Yes of course it feels bad that you were fired. Maybe OPs workplace does the same? Sharing HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL info with a JOURNALIST? Life may not look better in 6 months but I bet it does in 3 years. The only thing an employer may not do is make employment decisions based upon you being a member of a protected class. 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. I was often privy to non-public information because I was designing media campaigns around them. 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. Really? would be frustrating if she had a good relationship with them, or if she cared a lot about the reputation of her publication as a whole. If you break certain unspoken rules, you can lose your job or ruin your career. A large part of this is creating the interest that will drive The Thing, and the market/desirability of The Thing. We've added a "Necessary cookies only" option to the cookie consent popup. Businesses have a term for that kind of behaviour, and that is 'data leakage'. ); Im also thinking of someone I know whose work depends on his being able to drive who got a DUI last year, and someone who essentially had a full emotional breakdown in a workplace I was in when I was a lot younger, who ended up under her desk sobbing and throwing things). Your former job will probably only verify your employment unless you broke a governmental regulation. Your coworker didnt choose to know this information and does not owe you silence. 1. 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. I had to learn the hard way, Im afraid, but I did learn. 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. Aug. 4, 2008, at 11:14 a.m. 7 Ways Your E-mail Can Get You Fired. Good points, and good advice for anyone whos apologizing for anything. She probably felt she had a duty to disclose it and she may well have. Also, if your mentor went through the trouble of having a conversation with you about your duties and seemed concerned, I doubt she was out to get you she probably felt it was her duty and to her best interest to report now that you have made her an accomplice-after-the-fact in any potential breach (say, your friend was the one out to get you and it leaked before your department had any plans for dealing with a leak, this mentor would also be in trouble for not reporting it as soon as she knew if they found out she did), OP I want to comment on one aspect that I didnt see anyone mentioning directly. Nothing I said contradicts this. Messages like this can simply be ignored and deleted. Your failure to understand the gravity of your actions is alarming. We will always be privy to confidential information in our roles, its the nature of what we do. How does this make it any better or worse..? Take this to heart in your next position and deal with sensitive information. The rules are severe because people need externals to keep them motivated. 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.. 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. 911 Dispatcher Fired for Privacy Violation - HIPAA Journal That OP knew it was wrong and felt guilty about it is a sign of strength. broke a rule can be trivial, even if its technically a firing offense. Note: You dont want to frame this as It would have been made public eventually so I did nothing wrong. Your tone is still very much acknowledging that you messed up. Wait, what the friend is a *journalist*?. 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. Its not a big career risk for her friend the way it is for her, but depending on what the information was, it could have put the friend in an awkward position. 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. You unpromptedly wrote a message to the friend. An employee who doesn't know about a policy important enough to fire someone over is just a ticking time bomb to an employer. Your understanding of confidential is not mine. 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. I doubt it was the plan to storm Area 51. You want to minimize this, and thats natural. [Well-known bad person] is going to be fined/punished/arrested. Its helped me when a friend has told me something in confidence but I really need to talk about it for whatever reason. 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. Situations like this are one reason I think workplaces with confidential/sensitive information should regularly remind their employees of what confidentiality means for them, rather than leaving it as a blanket statement or only discussed during new employee training. But even if there is no danger, an obligation to report is just that. Send the attachment in a follow-up email and, in the future, attach the document before you even begin writing your email. (IE: if they think you f*cked up, then respond like you did, however you actually feel). For excellent reasons. I wrote back and asked, Is there more context for why your coworker thought that? Stack Exchange network consists of 181 Q&A communities including Stack Overflow, the largest, most trusted online community for developers to learn, share their knowledge, and build their careers. Its was exciting and you couldnt wait?! Removed a long string of comments about the condescension in the honey remark. I hope you get past this, it may bar you from future government work, but not other placed hopefully if you follow Alisons advice and really own up to the mistake. The message there is dont violate confidentiality policies. This is awkward to frame as apparently it would have passed unnoticed if you hadnt taken aim at your own foot and then pulled the triggerit would be better if you were fired after fessing up to your superiors, rather than involving anyone else. ), This didnt involve a records request. But from there you can talk about what you learned from the experience and how this makes you a better employee/candidate now. Telling the trusted friend was the fireable offense. As someone who practices public relations, calling this victimless gives me a lot of anxiety. Basically, I was fired for X mistake. Agree with this. He had a fairly high security clearance and was stationed at NORAD for a time. Its like winning the jackpot in a slot machine then declaring that you KNEW you were going to win, so it wasnt really gambling at all. 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 . You colleagues are often the closest people to you, so it makes sense to want to tell them about your problems (which include work screw-ups), but you cant. Yeah the world just being what it is, if youre this bad at keeping secrets, youre gonna get burned by it pretty quick. Gov employee here and I would be in trouble as well for not reporting what LW told coworker. (For the record, I always told people I was interviewing as a source that there was no such thing as off the record with me its not a requirement of our field, theres no law saying we have to follow that request if asked, so if the subject didnt want me to print something, they shouldnt tell me. Its what you do with what you learn that is important. Never mind firing for leaks, they dont even hire people who appear to have poor judgement about confidential information. 1) Slack vs text: doesnt matter. Unfortunately, there are instances where employees have accidentally leaked confidential information. Same applies here as you stated. And you might know that you trust that friend 100% to keep it confidential but your employer would prefer to make that call themselves, and thought theyd done so when they told you the information couldnt be shared. We literally filled a room with records for them, and 99% of it was people asking what flavor of donuts to bring to a meeting or requesting copies of informational flyers. Leaking information can actually be the right thing in some cases. I dont know, I think thats overstating. One piece of information I learned (that has since been announced publicly, but hadnt been at the time) was SO EXCITING that in a weak moment, I texted one friend about it in celebration. how do I get out of an active-shooter drill at my office? Further, the laws/regluations dont actually make allowances for how many people are told the confidential information, or how much you, the employee, trusts the person they told. Like I said, very strange but its worked for me. one last post-script: this person wasnt super good at their job, but was a teammate i worked closely with, and doubt they had been put on a PIP prior to this. Or, maybe they totally overreacted, who knows its impossible to say from here. Still wondering why there was no second chance, though. You shouldnt be upset at your coworker, if anything she should be upset with you for putting her in that situation. Is it illegal to read an e-mail that was accidentally sent to you? It can depend on what mechanisms are in place to protect the content of the email, who is sending the email, who it is being sent to, the content of the email, and whether the subject of the HIPAA information has provided their written authorization for unsecured PHI to be . Thats an important impulse to explore to avoid other similar situations with gossip. That really set the tone for the reference she gave. Its also totally understandable that youre disappointed about losing your job, but they might have just considered that kind of confidentiality breach too much of a risk going forward. 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. It might just be that the scanners caught it and notified security.

How To Change Bullet Color In Html, Why Did Ruger Discontinue The 44 Carbine, Iihf Eligibility Rules, Articles C