… but the perpetrator doesn’t know she was being taped.
Here’s what happened:
Last week my department manager asked all employees to leave on her desk a self-evaluation prior to being evaluated by her for our merit increases.
I left mine on her desk covered up by some other documents which she also needed to go through. The day after, she wrote me an e-mail telling me I needed to get this document to her ASAP since she had a deadline. I e-mailed her back asking if she had not found the self-evaluation and she replied she had not.
Okay. I work nights and when I get off at 7 am there is one and only one person who relieved me on the morning that I had left the paper on my boss’s desk. Our boss leaves her office unlocked because we have to put faxes, charges and other stuff on her desk, and I reiterate that my document was under several others. (In retrospect, I wish I had sealed it in an envelope, but I had no idea that someone would actually dig down and do away with my evaluation.)
I don’t feel good about this, but I have a small tape recorder that I left running in my bag the next morning when there were two people relieving me, and I was able to tape them both laughing about it. (It turned out the one who relieved me the morning in question had shredded it).
I have lodged complaints about these two and their slovenly patient care in the past, so I am not their favorite person, and as I said I don’t feel good about the way I caught the one. What would you do if you were in my place?
I realize this is not admissible in a court of law, but I would like to let her and my boss know that I do not appreciate the theft of my document, even though technically it was no longer mine the minute I placed it on the desk.
Out of idle curiosity…does the State/Territory/Province in which you reside consider what you did (the taping without the other party’s knowledge) to be a felony or misdemeanor and if so, what is the prescribed penalty?
Hmmmmm… I’m not a lawyer, but I’ll weigh in anyway.
The tape can’t be used in criminal proceeding, but I sure as heck think it can be used as evidence of job misconduct particularly if you have at-will employment. The women who conspired against you may eventually cost you your job in some other incident.
I don’t know if I’d want to go that route - even though you’re entirely in the right, it may lead to other problems down the road. handle it delicately. Make a copy of your evaluation and return it to you boss in a sealed envelope. Be sure to reiterate that you specifically left it on her desk the previous evening. Ask her pointedly and repeatedly if anyone was in her office or if anything seems out of place or missing. Accusations won’t work, but insinuations might get her thinking in the right direction. if you have a good relationship with your boss and a record of honesty and trust, then she’ll believe you and that’s the end of it.
I don’t know. I guess the old saying “Be careful what you wish for…” has a lot of truth in it. Think I should turn myself in? If so, then we’d better send this over to IMHO. I’m pretty sick over this whole thing, and maybe I’m no better than her. Was that your point?
There’s certainly a bit of politics here, since it wouldn’t be wise for some people to know you’ve been taping them. My recommendation: If you’re on good terms with your boss and you think she won’t hold the taping against you, play the tape for her.
I don’t personally think what you did was wrong, and you’re certainly not “no better than her”. But the first thing I’d do in your shoes is to find out if you did anything illegal. If not, I’d let your boss know about it pronto and not worry about making the relationship between you and the shredder worse. If she’s shredding your documents, it’s a lost cause already, plus this is, in my opinion, a firing offense (direct and intentional sabotage of your own working group seems like a pretty obvious firing offense to me), so you might not have to put up with her anymore anyway.
If what you did was illegal, then you have to consider whether or not your relationship with your boss is good enough to bring it up without worrying about legal problems. If nothing else, you might be able to use it to clear your name, e.g. “look, this isn’t exactly legal evidence, so I don’t expect you to take action against her about it, but I’d just like you to know that I did leave that on your desk, and here’s what happened to it.” In that circumstance, the boss might just start looking for other problems with this person on her own.
Recommendation: Don’t do something that might be illegal because you think someone else is doing something that might be illegal. Well, at least not with checking it out first.
Nope. But I think it might be a good idea to use the tape to record something nice because obviously wink wink you don’t have any other blank tapes around and just had to use that one and really didn’t realize there was already something on it.
Pretty much.
Anyway, leaving aside the absolutely incredibly freaking stupidity of the head honcha there what with leaving personnel related documents unsecured, aren’t there administrative avenues available to you to deal with the duplicitious individuals there?
I might be inclined to find a “subtle” way to let those coworkers believe that there is some sort of undercover investigation going on about the theft of documents but that you dont know anything for sure.Just to spin their wheels.
A sure fire way to plant the grain is to find a way saying it in the manner of a denial, like you don’t believe such a thing is happening and those people you have seen around the place poking about are probably standards audit staff or somesuch.
It might help if it was understood that real serious stuff is thought to be involved but that even small events are being closely examined.
Of course you dont believe any of this is true!
As to your supervisor, well you can let it be known to her that you believe that some items could be lifted from her desk including your report and request that she finds a more secure environment for confidential materials.She may ask how you know but you may have to decline to offer the reason. I wonder what would happen if the tape should arrive on her desk anonymously with a note suggesting that she should listen to it.Of course you wouldn’t have the slightest idea where it came from.
Your co-workers will have read your report and therefore you may be able to trip them up on this by asking them how they came by information, tongues wag and they are bound to let slip some comment which you can use to hang them.
A comment like " Strange how you know about that since it was only written on a report I made and which curiously went missing from the supervisors desk during the time you were on duty"
Regarding the actual practice of recording a conversation without another party’s knowledge: I am not altogether certain that it is illegal.
Others have advised that you look into it for your location; and that is good advice. But, I can tell you that it is probably OK. It tends to depend on whether or not you are a ‘party’ to the conversation. Most jurisdictions allow you to record conversations (on the telephone or otherwise) in which you take part, and you need not inform the other party.
I think what gets most people confused about this is two-fold. 1) Most businesses tell you that they “may record your call for training or customer service reasons.” This is a courtesy really. 2) We also get helped in our confusion by television. TV shows often try to explain the inadmissable evidence nature of these types of recordings etc. But, in these TV cases, it is often more about the powers of the Police and what they can do in criminal matters. However, some TV examples actually demonstrate that this is OK. (Think TV news shows like Dateline that do ‘undercover’ reports etc.) If this were illegal in the jursidiction where they were doing it you can bet they wouldn’t go on air with incriminating evidence.
All of that said, there are still some concerns if you recorded the conversation of others without their knowledge and you were not a party to that conversation.
Thank you so much for those URL’s! They were most helpful in this dilemma of mine, especially the last one.
I would like to thank also those of you who took the trouble to reply. It isn’t easy confessing one’s weakness (however temporary it may have been) to people one does not know, but since I have joined this MSB, I have learned that there are people who care and who will give you an honest answer, and that is what I was after.
Dear people, I am sitting here, it is a weekend and what I am about to say may strike some of you as ridiculous, but I think I have some inkling of what rape is like for a woman. Before you judge what I say too harshly, please let me emphasize that I am intelligent enough to know the difference between rape of the body and theft of information. The pains are different and yet the pains are the same: Someone took something you did not want them to have.
My background won’t interest you. I am just a guy who works a 12 hour shift at his hospital and gives the best patient care possible, but I won’t tolerate laziness, which is what caused the rift which ultimately caused this problem.
I am not looking to you for absolution for what I did. I did it and I am not sure if I can say that I wouldn’t do it again. I suppose Monty would say I gave in to the baser instinct and sunk to her level, and I understand that. Having been in the health care profession for most of my adult life, my whole philosophy has been to help, not to hinder. However, I ask again, what would {i]y’all* have done?
There are more details to this story, but what can one say in the space provided here? Better yet, why waste your time?
Just wanted to say thanks, and I hope this will never happen to you.
I would send a memo at work say post it on the bulletin board or email saying that you have had property stolen from you in the past and in order to find out who was doing it you set up a tape recorder to catch the thief and that you now have recording of the possible suspect but you need help identifying the voice on the tape and that if anyone would like to listen to the tape and help identify the thief you would really appreciate it. This way you didn’t accuse anyone the people who listen to the tape will and if anyone ask about the tape recorder just tell them you didn’t want to make false accusations on something as serious as stealing
You could always try honesty with your boss. Come clean, and apologize profusely for making the tape, but tell her that you made it, and that on it your co-worker admitted taking your evaluation and shredding it. The apology is important to diffuse any reaction against you. You may get a “don’t do it again”, but I bet your boss will be much more upset with the employee who took a document from her desk. Even if she can’t use the tape legally, she can tell your co-worker she knows he/she took the evaluation with out saying how she knows. More importantly, she’ll never completely trust this person again.
I wouldn’t try subterfuge or trickery. However good it may seem like it will be when you go over it in your mind, it’ll probably just backfire. (Unless you’re the kind of person who can routinely pull this sort of thing off, but it doesn’t really sound like you are.)
I don’t know that you need to discover how you got to know it. I think it could be quite easy to get them to admit it without having to reveal how you got to know it…
You could just say you happen to have the information, their conversation was over heard… sort of imply you would rather not reveal the source leading them to believe they were overheard by someone who would rather not be identified. No need to be specific, just let them imagine exactly how much you may know.
I bet if your boss calls them separately and confronts them point blank with something like: "I have been told you were overheard saying you have done this. Is this true? … No? So you are saying that if somebody said that to me they would be lying? … "
A little questioning along those lines would probably bring a prompt confession with no need to reveal the source of the info.
Just say you have the information but you also have reasons to keep your sources private.
As others have suggested, you must check your local laws. In Washington State, it is a gross misdemeanor to audio record any private conversation without the express consent of all parties involved.
