In no time you will have your next job lined up and all this will be just a post earning you rep. There is no other guarantee, and yet people count on it. Dang! ugh, no if you cant tell them the actual news, dont tease it. I mean, yeah, absolutely! 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). Also, its not clear from your response Do you understand how serious what you did was? Please keep us updated and let us know how things work out for you. (And yes, the records request would come through the custodian of records, but the point of my second paragraph is that non-public information does not have special protections like confidential information and that the general public has a right to access that information as soon as it is available, and not just when the agency finds it convenient to send out a press release.). If its obvious who the email was intended for, just forward it on and cc the original sender, letting them know what youve done. Sometimes that PHI belongs to people I know. Other agencies will provide title and dates, and whether you are eligible for rehire. An employee who doesn't know about a policy important enough to fire someone over is just a ticking time bomb to an employer. Even a private company would consider this a breach of trust, and could could consider firing. Yep. Aug. 4, 2008, at 11:14 a.m. 7 Ways Your E-mail Can Get You Fired. 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). (Presumably easier to get caught via company comms but doesnt make the leak any different imo). Though there are a few that would be exciting. 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. Sometimes they go so far as tell the bearer of the news that they now have to soothe them bc its their fault they feel bad. She had no idea whether the friend would blab or not. The only thing an employer may not do is make employment decisions based upon you being a member of a protected class. OP doesnt sound naive or too young, either. There was no warning, no suspension, nothing. They might try to use silence to get you to say more. Pro tip: when working in mental health residential treatment, do not have clients write your staff logs. 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. As far as I know, he held the highest security clearance a civilian could have. Ideally. The Families First Coronavirus Response Act now requires employers to give up to two weeks of paid sick time if you get the coronavirus or were told to quarantine by a doctor. How do I explain to those potential future employers that the only reason I got fired was because I was ratted out by a coworker for a victimless mistake and was fired unfairly, without sounding defensive? Its also true that people do break confidentiality for a variety of reasons, but people who are really really REALLY aware that they are breaking confidentiality and how big the consequences of it are, are also on top of not leaving a footprint that can be traced back to them. I encourage you to get involved with PRSA. Once you do it, the consequences are the consequences. You are of course welcome to your feelings, we all feel what we feel, but it sounds like your thoughts and beliefs havent settled to the fact that **your feelings are dead wrong**. Both of those would merit a reprimand, separately or together, but somehow in the telling it got turned into that the latter happened with the former as the method. But your friends profession means you often cant share these types of things with her because of other peoples perceptions about it they dont know your friend, and while she may take off the record seriously, some journalists dont and your coworkers have no way of knowing which type of journalist she is. Email Mistakes at Work: How to Survive Them - CBS News Of course, its your fault but it is only human to be annoyed with someone, especially someone who seemed to completely misrepresent what happened. Yeah, Im wondering that too. The initial complaint filed against Google is currently under seal because the judge has asked the bank to redact the Gmail account from its filings. Its no fun to be fired. I hope you mean it when you say you understand the magnitude of this mistake and why you were fired for it. Yes and thats the consequence they now have to live with. Yes, this. 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). I definitely learned my lesson, and it was a hard one, and one that I will regret for a very, very long time. And if I tell anyone, including a coworker ,that I processed said claim, my butt could very well get in a lot of trouble. and the agency lost control of the information. update: how can I turn down training requests from my clients? Theres no way your managers could safely assign other confidential projects to you after leaking the information on this project. It may help you to know that the dreaded why are you unemployed right now question doesnt come up in every interview. And if weve learned anything from this letter, its that information thats supposed to be kept secret isnt always. Shes assuming the friend has more self-control than she does, which is precarious at best. OP erred, which she knows, but I dont think that means her mentor no longer has the obligation to be honest with her. I am trying not to be too harsh but yes you screwed up. My late dad worked for a government defence research agency for most of his career. Thats an important impulse to explore to avoid other similar situations with gossip. However, were only human. Im not cleared for it. Im thankful I did this in grad school rather than on the job. Any of our PR folks would be immediately fired. Of course I understand that I broke a rule, and that it was my mistake 100%, and it was no one elses fault. Organisations can set up static rules (for example, you can send emails to business A but not business B), but these traditional methods are rigid and unreliable. Find somewhere else to tell it in order to release the steam valve. Youre not in a gang or on a schoolyard playground or fighting with your sibling in the backseat of the family station wagon. OP has a right to be annoyed with Coworker, but Coworker was doing her job as well. That said, I am curious if theres other context that explains why they fired you for a first offense without warning you first. If you lean over a cubicle and whisper I broke the rule! Lose that part of the defense completely, OP. But if youre singling people out, or only using it in the context of chastising someone, then yeah, for sure condescending and rude. In most reporting policies i am aware of it would be considered tipping off and get the person reporting in trouble. This. Once you told your coworker, you dragged her out there on the plank with you. People tend to share with trusted confidants/partners/etc. As a damage control, should I (as the manager responsible) send a message to all employees explaining what occurred and asking them to respect the confidentiality of the information and not open nor forward the information to anyone else or should I just not bring additional attention to this message? You may ask them to delete the email before they read it. I was working on some client confidential information on my client issued laptop and I emailed this info to my personal mailbox as I wanted to continue doing work on my personal laptop; I couldn't take my work laptop away whilst on extended leave overseas. Basically, I was fired for X mistake. this is one of the reasons why its best to have a mentor who is NOT at the same company as you. You will bounce back! If you break certain unspoken rules, you can lose your job or ruin your career. Feelings are frequently conflated with facts in our minds and it can take some work to separate them. 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.) I have worked and volunteered at government-related organizations before. 27 April 2021. Those kinds of disclosures often rise to the level of immediate termination, which is what happened, here. Those questioners would hammer her on this. Its not about breaking a rule, its about potentially causing some serious issues by leaking information. It can bring vital information to the public who have a right to know. So, thats to say that I *completely* get the idea that at some point, you get to a point where you just really really need to share. 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 ? A true 100% owning of what you did. We cannot do our job with our leaders if they cannot trust us. Appropriately so, but still, wow. Leaking to the press can come with criminal penalties and you need to be very careful with how you report illegal/dangerous information for your own protection. She cut a guys LVAD wires so that hed be bumped up to the top of the heart transplant donor list? If the policy says people who tell information to non authorized individuals must be fired they could have been fired for not firing you. This disclosure was not inadvertent, and trying to frame it that way could backfire pretty hard. If each person tells just one person it can end up being a lot of people. If you open a phishing email and it results in your company's confidential information being compromised, your employer may fire you. Where I work, I cannot legally share information about very exciting things that are happening/about to happen. None of this makes you a bad person, untrustworthy, or unemployable. Which means have to vet things like your friend is a journalist, but doesnt cover your area? Im also not going to tell anyone else! I wonder LW, would your interactions with the higher ups have been different if your co-worker/mentor had given you the heads up that she was going to have to report this? Specifics dont matter, but to me, being able to explain you told your friend your employer was about to buy this farm to build a park so they bought the farm so they could raise the price and make a profit would make a huge difference in terms of making the OP aware of the consequences of their actions. OP can come up with steps to fix the real problem in their future jobs, but they cant really fix an evil coworker. Sorry that this happened to you (Ive made stupid mistakes too) but you may want to consider keeping problems like this to yourself. Yes, own it. It could be that she did (and I think no employer should ever fire anyone without hearing their version of the story) but the employer still thought its bad enough that they need to fire OP.
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