Some certainly will, especially those who are more security-conscious. Practice talking about it until you can truly pull it off. I did something similar over 20 years ago. You hear something genuinely classified and blab it too because its so cool? Definitely anti-climactic to actually know at this point! They are not neutral. Appropriately so, but still, wow. "Compose the email, and only then go back and enter the address (es)," he says. Maintaining confidentiality is a foundational occupational requirement in a lot of fields. Rules are there because its so easy to do that thing that feels harmless, and sometimes nobody gets hurt.. All we know is that OP made a disclosure, and the coworker is aware the disclosure happened via Slack. OP, specifically following up with Alisons advice above, you were fired because you showed your employer that your first reaction when learning about confidential information was to text (1) someone outside of your company who was not authorized to know that information and (2) someone who was a journalist, who by profession is at risk for leaking said confidential information EVEN IF you only know them as a friend and EVEN IF you promise pinky swear that they would never ever do that. Or when she builds a pattern of sharing harmless information until suddenly it isnt harmless? Thats why they told you no. A major penalty for breach of confidentiality is termination of employment. Agreed. Also, its not clear from your response Do you understand how serious what you did was? Can I get fired for . Never mind firing for leaks, they dont even hire people who appear to have poor judgement about confidential information. My code is GPL licensed, can I issue a license to have my code be distributed in a specific MIT licensed project? I thoughtlessly mentioned an embargoed announcement to a longtime friend in journalism before it was public. Best wishes to OP in her work on this. In a roundabout way, they somewhat did you a kindness by firing you. Instead, you gossiped about it and risked an announcement before things were ready. was. Excellent points, especially LWs use of ratted out. Alison has said so many times that theres no tattling in the work world. Once info is out in the community, you have no control over where it goes and any and all ramifications. The org needed to know in order to assess potential damage and limit future opportunities. How does this make it any better or worse..? 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. The coworker did the right thing. Then whenever you send a message, you'll be given an option to "Cancel" at the top of the message before it's sent. More employers are still going to be turned off by that than impressed. All the meanwhile you're still trying to run a successful business and handling other things that are coming up. Its a bigger deal because that friend is a journalist. It may help in your next position to transpose your thinking around these things a bit. I DEFinitely sometimes shared those tidbits with friends and family who were big tiger/hippo/etc fans. Spek raised a good point- find out what your HR policy is so you know what to be prepared for in an interview. 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. Plus you might be doing them a massive favour when it comes to catching a data breach early. Also, am I even allowed to bring up the fact that someone ratted me out? A supervisor discovers that an employee has recently downloaded thousands of pages of confidential Company billing and financial information, and e-mailed it to her personal e-mail address. Don't worry, you're still qualified to be Secretary of State. We dont even know where the LW is; Alison has gotten letters from outside of the United States before. I agree that the companys response was wrong the sexual harasser should have been fired but in the US, authority doesnt care. I work in communications for a large organization and I see this as a trust issue with leadership. Does that matter? 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. Perhaps something like the announcement of the new Amazon HQ? The point still stands, however, that Contract Killers proposed sanctions likely dont appear to apply here. 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). That was not an enjoyable situation at all. I thought it was over. Egress Software Technologies Ltd. Find out what you should do when a misdirected email lands in your inbox. Some agencies will only provide title and dates of employment, which is a lucky break for you. A selfie was reportedly taken that accidentally also showed the dispatch screen. The coworker is not a rat or at fault here. If I were your coworker I would have done the exact same thing. I will add that I consider neither my cats nor Jesus to be imaginary; the connection was someone you wouldnt get in trouble for sharing with. Ive only had a very general idea of what my husband does since 2002, because he cant tell me. Best of luck in your next job! Shes never even heard any of the names of our clients, except for a couple she met once at an adjunct social function. Challenge them directly and be sure that when they say it's okay to start at 9.30am, make sure they actually mean it, or don't do it. Learn more about Stack Overflow the company, and our products. It may be that the decision is made and it is just a matter of time before you are gone. The Smurfs have a secret colony in the woods of Maine!. Yup. If asked specifially try to describe in detail what happened and what you learned from it, for example: ask if the new employer has clear guidelines on data handling. Absolutely! this is one of the reasons why its best to have a mentor who is NOT at the same company as you. Bye. Frequently there would be confidential news like, The tiger had her baby and its a girl! or Were getting hippos! that we couldnt share with the public for a few days (to be sure the baby was healthy and would survive past a critical period, or so the news could be shared in the way the marketing department deemed appropriate, or whatever.) Lose that part of the defense completely, OP. Conversely, I cant tell him about certain things from my work, though at least he knows what I do. And Im not saying it was fair or unfair or whether your previous employer made the right call. At the risk exposing my identity to a reader who knows me offline, two big things Ive leaked without running afoul of any organizational trust are: Such and such church is giving away their building and my nonprofit is under consideration to be the recipient and Were going to be filing a lawsuit against X because of Y., To clarify, Im not trying to minimize the gravity of OPs mistake or the seriousness of strict confidentiality in other contexts. I definitely learned my lesson, and it was a hard one, and one that I will regret for a very, very long time. how else could you have met that need?) None of this makes you a bad person, untrustworthy, or unemployable. It happens. So to summarize, while an individual in your circumstance can be fired for the accidental dissemination of confidential employment information, their employer cannot press criminal charges against them, both because a private entity lacks the authority to make that decision and more fundamentally because the accidental dissemination of . I dont find it understandable that the OP expected a second chance for this, as someone who routinely deals with unclassified-but-FOUO, Confidential, and Secret information, except insofar as I can have sympathy for someone who perhaps didnt understand the gravity of their actions until consequences came down. 1. MUCH stronger. I was wondering the same thing. That the information eventually became public is not in any way relevant. How could you have felt defensive about getting disciplined for that? And they also need to have an acute understanding that the timing of disclosure makes a HUGE, TREMENDOUS difference. This is incredibly condescending. 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. I have to deal with famous folks at well; I work for a company that handles federal medical insurance and every once in a while I might run across Justice X, Senator Y, etc. Im sure they thought she was a fruit cake. 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. So the judgment on trustworthiness is flawed. If it was more time than 6 months, thats a resume gap that a recruiter will ask about, and if the OP lies about the gap, an experienced recruiter will hear it in her voice. Point isnt that OP doesnt have a right to feel what OP feelsif OP has a sick, gut-punch feeling, thats the truth of how OP is feeling. 2. This is why you never ever confidentially share work-related things with colleagues. No checking out salary information permitted! Wait, what the friend is a *journalist*?. You might add to Alisons script, I knew immediately that I needed to report my indiscretion, and I did so right away. Damn, thats hard core. Also, she wasnt a journalist I ever interacted with professionally shes a friend Ive had for years. Or you mistyped her email by one letter and it went to a colleague who had no reason to respect the embargo? This mixed with the coworkers inflated story, I would be more than annoyed by this coworker too. Its no worse than our organization doesnt protect classified information no matter how badly an employee disregards policies. If OP doesnt recognize and own up to that, thats going to be a bigger red flag for potential employers than if OP said, I made a mistake, learned from it, and it wont happen again.. And I think you can share your excitement with others, just not the information. A true 100% owning of what you did. Every hospital Ive worked at requires yearly HIPAA compliance training. How do you approach company policy in general? And in fact, NOT getting that second chance with them might mean that you take it more seriously and handle the next relationship in a trustworthy manner. I do a lot of trade shows and we always remind booth staff of what to say (talk points) and what not to say to trade journalists. How is an ETF fee calculated in a trade that ends in less than a year? I wish I lived in your country. OP, its great that you trusted your friend enough to be confident that she wouldnt share what you told her. Second coworker only was put on an improvement plan. Its not the end of the world as long as you adjust your thinking going forward and really try to understand why confidentiality policies exist. I am trying not to be too harsh but yes you screwed up. Some offenses are serious enough that a single incident is enough to fire someone. Thats another instant firing, even if the information isnt ever misused. People find new jobs after being fired all the time. 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. Let me tell you what happened to the people who were not on the care team and accessed a newsworthy medical case. 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. 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. Am I likely to be rehired after being fired for misconduct? Or, she just needs to buy a journal and write the good news, and her feelings about same, down and go on with her job. I imagine there are a lot like that in government but he learned from working with a non apologetic, scandal plagued politician that consequences of what seems little to you may not be to the tabloids. Im sure the letter writer has plenty of that to deal with already. Trying to tell the OP otherwise is to minimize the impact of a serious offense. Please do not include any confidential or sensitive information in a contact form, text message, or voicemail. Until the boys parents threw the uncle out. It would have been a ticking timebomb for them, and the next time it could have leaked beyond the friend. The best case scenario is former company only verifies employment. (I dont know if the OP explicitly said off the record, but its not like journalists dont handle that all the time when people do.). It's difficult to prevent a leak from happening again if you don't know how it occurred in the first place. Thats a flat out easy to uncover lie. how do I get out of an active-shooter drill at my office? It doesnt matter if your friend is a journalist or not; thats a total red herring. I would argue if you acknowledge your error in judgment, it would work more to your benefit, then classifying it as a one-off mistake and overreaction by your company. The actual problem is that OP shared confidential information. Other agencies will provide title and dates, and whether you are eligible for rehire. All rights reserved. I work in patents, and regularly see information that can definitely not be made public and has to be sent back and forth with extra security measures, but would also be tremendously boring to everyone but the IP team for a few specific rival companies in a very tiny field. No, not if its classified or embargoed. 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. OP, please do not take this comment string seriously, because internalizing these statements will severely harm your ability to address your error effectively. The latter looks more like something that could repeat under similar circumstances. So, are you clear about the severity of your action and the significance of this rule? I encourage you to spend some time really thinking about this and absorbing the very good feedback you have generally received here. And especially, sharing information that youre not supposed to tends to be the type of thing that will get you fired immediately without another chance. The information was work i was working on at the moment and I emailed it as I needed to do work on my personal laptop ; I couldn't take my work station away whilst on extended leave overseas. I dont think we fired anyone but the need for absolute confidentiality was reiterated. And by becoming the must fanatically trustworthy discreet person. It can bring vital information to the public who have a right to know. What is the correct way to screw wall and ceiling drywalls? So I guess maybe it is a generational thing? Im assuming the LW plead their case and filled in relevant information. I will be in so much trouble if anyone finds out! your blindsided coworker is not required to enter into a cover-up conspiracy with you. I work for a charity that offers a telephone service nationwide, and I take a lot of calls from people in quite distressing situations. While the 911 caller believes criminal charges are appropriate, that is a matter for the district attorney to decide. The rules are severe because people need externals to keep them motivated. 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. (Many of these claims have to be handled by specialists who have security clearance, but not all of them.). Forgetting the attachment. I agree. The details dont really matter. No, shes a person with ethics who plays by the rules. You technically did something, your friend happened to be a journalist, victimless mistake, and so on. Well, it has been released now, so technically we could. From a government point of view, the only thing that matters is this: LW was trusted to handle confidential information and keep it inside the agencys control; instead she passed that information to someone outside that permission (whose job is to disseminate information to the public!) This is one of those very serious offenses for which there are no second chances in many organizations, even when the breach is accidental or through slop practices and not intentional. However, were only human. If not, that would be an additional reason for your bosses to take the maximum option to respond. Sometimes he wasnt working on confidential stuff, and he could come home and geek out over what he was doing if he wanted. Getting fired sucks. If you hadnt told your co-worker, then they could not have ratted you out. It all comes down to the nature of the data you are handling. 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. Where did you go from here? You are almost certainly an at-will employee so you can be discharged at anytime and for any reason or even no reason at all. And even more so in ballistic missile submarines! They have absolutely no obligation to keep secrets for government agencies or private companies. A number of US governmental agencies specifically require that the co-worker NOT tell LW that she will be reporting this to management. If something like this would help, maybe try it. Why is there a voltage on my HDMI and coaxial cables? There are, unfortunately, many things I am doomed to not know even though I would really like to find out. All of that being said, I wish her the best in moving forward and finding another job shell bounce back and be the wiser for it. 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. This is an issue in most fields. The penalty for breach of confidentiality isn't restricted to employees who have . Its helped me when a friend has told me something in confidence but I really need to talk about it for whatever reason. If that is so, there is nothing you can do to avoid the termination and you should be looking for new employment. It would probably breach a few laws in other European countries too. What happens when someone sees that message over her shoulder? I think that is also part of the lesson that OP needs to learn. Your first step should be to contact your old HR department and ask about their policies for reference checks. But I dont think it helps OP to feed a narrative that prevents OP from owning the situation going forward. Oh, its possible to be a rat in the workplace. A majority of those who work from home would use their own personal digital devices such as laptop, tablet or mobile to perform their daily work tasks and it is also convenient for employees to. And being mad at them is an effort to dodge responsibility and ownership of the actions that WERE at fault. Finally I decided to own it at the next interview and I got the job. Its was exciting and you couldnt wait?! You asked how to handle this in future interviews and one key is owning the mistake, taking responsibility for it. One of the things that is emphasized very heavily at my agency is that your own perception of how important a piece of information is does not give you enough information to decide if its really a big deal. I meant inadvertently as they were confiding in a friend not willfully giving information to the press. Your coworker didnt choose to know this information and does not owe you silence. We call this a misdirected email and it's really, really easy to do. 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. No, no, no, no, no. It makes the sender aware of their mistake and less likely to bother you again in the future. She showed no contrition or reflection. I feel LWs pain. If you embezzle from the company and tell a coworker who then reports it, the mistake is embezzlement, not telling a coworker about it. She would have learned a valuable lesson and still kept her job. This seems like a no-brainer to just not do, and if you did, certainly not to tell someone at work that you did this. Request that they email you to confirm they've done so. Yeah, if the LW is in the US or things operate the same way in their country, theres no point in trying to lie or even waffle about what happened. I dont know the OPs financial status but if she needed the $$$ its not that easy to look at it as a kindness in the moment. Share information about a Harry Potter book before it being officially released? Forgetting to attach a mentioned attachment is common, but still embarrassing. :) :) :) :) Being a wealthy heiress and a socialite IS a full-time job! 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. While it didnt result in any press, it was obviously a major lapse in judgment and I understand why it resulted in my termination. because your performance / screw-up affects them, or because they feel they are being compared to you and want to put the record straight to defend themselves), or out of a sense that they have an obligation to report (whether or not they actually do). Taking a quick peek at someones medical records just out of curiosity? when we had a high school shooting, a student I knew (10 y old) and who got into it (gladly uninjured) got a visit from his own uncle who was a journalist that very evening, who came to visit the parents and then proceeded to try to get his nephew to talk about the details. Or they might have a zero-tolerance policy for leaks as a deterrent. It would have been better if she had told you first that she was going to tell someone, but whether she warns you first has no bearing on whether she was obligated to disclose. Much as we like to think confidentiality is transferrablethat as long as the people we tell keep things confidential we didnt breach confidentiality to tell themits not. They would definitely see any mention of confidentiality breach as a huge red flag and drop OP from the hiring process at once. Youll also want to double-check any attachments. 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. Maybe OPs workplace does the same? How do I politely turn down the call for an interview by another employer? Feelings are frequently conflated with facts in our minds and it can take some work to separate them. And I told Mom, so so so many times that I didnt build it myself! Libel or slander or posting comments about individuals that are not related to your work environment are not protected. Period. End of story. In such cases, the employee should be given the benefit of the doubt. If you break certain unspoken rules, you can lose your job or ruin your career. You broke a rule and you have to take responsibility. Im sorry, but I think you were fired with pretty good cause and it would be important to own that or you wont be able to spin the story for future employers. Nothing dangerous, and while I was there it honestly wasnt even anything that would be a big scoop or exciting dinner party story. Im not sure whether this is something they can move on from or not, but they absolutely need to get themselves out of the mindset that their coworker ratted on them, because thinking that reporting things like that is tattling and childish is how corruption grows. Which is so far beyond the truth Im honestly wondering if this coworker had it out for me the whole time. Journalists seek out and report information thats their job. OP will also want to consider not focusing her career path on jobs that require a security clearance for classified information. In a professional context, close friendships and personal trust arent always as ironclad as they can be in personal relationships, particularly when it comes to security and confidentiality. However, it is unlikely that the circumstances of your firing will be able to be overlooked by an employer who needs to trust your judgment with sensitive data, definitely for the foreseeable future, possibly for many years into your career. Agreed. The anger I hold for my coworker is something I will deal with over time. picture of male guinea fowl . I think that WAS her second chance, and I think something she said at the meetings (perhaps about how the problem is the coworker for being a rat) blew that second chance. Im also not going to tell anyone else! Im sure he knew about things that he would have liked to talk about, and my dad can talk about anything to anyone at great length. Dont fall for it. A 40 year old making the same mistake would be much harder to trust later. 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. But when the guilt is deserved, its got a purpose. I might consider you as a candidate who truly gets it in a way that someone who hasnt been tried by fire might not. Once you do it, the consequences are the consequences. But, bald facts, they told you not to do the thing you turned around and did. Everyone makes mistakes at all points in our careers. (Plus, were not sure how much of the inflation came from the coworker and how much came from their superiors. Yes, when I worked at a financial firm I believe that exact question was on a privacy training test: If I run across the name of a celebrity in the client management system while performing my duties, its okay to tell friends and family about it, True or False?. How did you talk to your boss about the slack channel full of journalists? Were you able to correct the factual mistake in context, and what phrasing did you use? (Obviously dont tell any potential employer that but its my personal opinion). Feelings can be irrational though, or overblown, or immature, or any number of shades of wrong that means you shouldnt give them 100% credence. Which is not how I would handle things now, but I was a lot younger and in a bad place in my personal life, so. But thats where having friends in the same workplace comes inyou can expend the impulse by gushing to them and then zip your lips once you leave the building. Im a journalist, so, yes. In this situation, I reported myself is simply false, given OPs expectation that her mentor wouldnt pass along what she knew to anyone else. Your former job will probably only verify your employment unless you broke a governmental regulation. She just needs to learn discretion. It was the wrong thing to do, and Im sorry. The info I released did not in fact cause any problems, but I tremble now because it so easily could have, in even slightly different circumstances. Some projects you could talk about with a trusted friend as long as you didnt get specific, but shouldnt announce on twitter. Better to say in a single instance of poor judgment I let a piece of information get outside of the company to one person which I immediately knew was a mistake and I notified someone in my company. Unfortunately these days a lot of the regulators are crooked and will never do anything about problems without a lot of public pressure (and sometimes not even then). Even a private company would consider this a breach of trust, and could could consider firing.
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