Am I Being Paranoid? Work Drama

In My Humble Opinion
1

Ok, I am asking this question in earnest. If you all say that I am indeed being paranoid, I will accept that and shake it off.

I work at finding people apartments. I find them some apartments, show it to them, if they love it, we go back to my office, put down a deposit and if the deal closes, I make money. Great.

Now, the way to do this is to post ads…I do that online. If someone likes my ad, they email me at the website. That will send an alert to my office email.

This morning, I woke up to see a great response on my email when I checked my work email by my phone…A woman with great credit, high income, needing an awesome apartment ASAP. YESSSS! I live for that.

She didn’t leave a number, but I knew I could just email her back, as soon as I got to work. I got out the door and was walking away from my apartment and decided to look at the email again…just to admire it. It was gone. No trace of it. I still had emails in my office account, but none from the woman who emailed me earlier (Let’s call her Jane; I always liked that name.)

So, when I got to work, I opened the email account on the work computer. No email. So I opened the website on which I had placed the ad…the message was there, just as I had remembered it in all its splendor.

Now…when a deposit is made on a place to an agent in our office, an email alert goes out. Just as I was writing Jane back and asking her if she still needed help finding an apartment, I saw an email alert pop up on my work email, saying that my boss had just collected a deposit for the same apartment that Jane was responding to.

Now. I may just be sour grapes because my boss landed a deposit for the apartment that I thought I was about to rent. But the thing is…something else minor happened recently that makes me think the boss might be a little…shady. (I’ll go into that if the thread goes anywhere and it comes up.)

I mentioned to my coworkers the case of the disappearing email, and they all said I must have mistakenly deleted it. So I checked the trash and there was nothing there.

I just don’t know…is it possible the boss saw a great lead in my email and took it? Did he tell Jane he will handle it from here and not to respond to anymore emails from me? I actually hope I am just being paranoid, because I am kind of depending on this boss to help me get my renting career popping.

I should mention two things. One thing is that the boss is the one who ‘listed’ that apartment. In other words, he is the listing agent who told us sales agents that this apartment is exists and that we should post it because it is great. So, it really isn’t that far fetched that he landed a deposit on it.

But that brings me to the other thing…he is not a sales agent, he is the big boss…the franchise owner and broker. It is actually unusual for him to be the one to take a deposit, so this seemed odd.

Am I being paranoid?

2

You’re leaving out the most telling part of the story until the thread goes somewhere? Uh-uh - what has the boss done that’s shady? And does the boss have your email password or something?

3

If you think something wierd happened, and it involves your income, then I don’t think you are paranoid. Unfortunately since it involves a manager, you know to tread carefully.

I think the first step would be to create an email rule that copies all incoming mail to a private account of yours.

If this is a one-of event, then so be it.

If it becomes a regular event, then it’s time to worry.

But no, if you saw something then you saw it. Don’t ignore yourself.

4

I don’t know; is it even possible for your boss to take emails from your work account? It does sound suspicious that the email disappeared and your boss got the deposit for the plum apartment you were just about to rent, but if there is no way for him to have done that…

5

No email to work is private. Someone with Administrator rights can do a lot. You can confirm this, but I advise stealth. Also, if he’s pulling the Sigourney Weaver “Boney-Ass” routine, can you still trust him?

6

OleOneEye, my thinking was, if everyone says, “Oh, you are being super silly right now” then there is no need to go into other stuff. But if there was a split decision, I would weigh in with more details. It is complicated and long, so I don’t feel like it, but fuck it…

There was another case where a young lady (let’s call her Shay, I like that name) emailed me with interest in an apt. She and I corresponded and then she came into the office when I wasn’t there and went to view apartments with someone else. Ok, that’s fine. I thought that was odd, because if someone comes in asking for a co worker, I don’t take them apartment hunting, I tell them to call that co worker. She DID call me that day, but it was early on a Sunday and she went to my voicemail. By the time I found out someone else took her to see apartments, it was Monday morning and my boss said to me, “You missed money by not coming in on a Sunday…I sent “Bob” to take her out instead. You should really not miss Sundays”.

Well, it turns out that I find out later from another co worker (a superior, but under the boss) that BOB didn’t take Shay out, THE BOSS took her out. And the coworker who told me this didn’t realize he was ratting the boss out. He was just disputing me when I mentioned that Bob had taken her out, “No he didn’t! Boss took her out, Bob wasn’t even here!!”

So that was weird. But I shook it off and never mentioned it.

2gigch1, yes, I know what I saw. That part is for sure. I remembered her name and everything and that was confirmed when I went to the ad website. So the email was DEFINITELY THERE and then DEFINITELY GONE. But to answer OleOneEye’s question…he doesn’t have my password.

7

If he has admin access, and the right setup, then he can indeed manipulate mail all day. It’s unlikely, but not impossible. I don’t know that what you describe is exactly shady, however.

8

Change your password.

I haven’t done this in a long time but I believe there is a way to automatically duplicate any email you get to another email address. If you can set that up, I guess the admins would still be able to delete your work email but they wouldn’t be able to do anything with the alternate email.

9

Yeah. I’m thinking, change the damn password, regardless. I’m probably wrong, but it doesn’t hurt to be on the safe side.

10

Now I don’t think you’re being paranoid; your boss is not an honest, trustworthy person.

11

That sucks to realize, Cat Whisperer, because when he recruited me, he gave me a bio of his life story which was a ghetto boy makes good kind of narrative that really is something that I wanted to believe in.

12

Quick question- did you actually confirm it was Jane who rented with the boss? Did you ever follow up with her? Maybe it’s a hot property and someone else contacted your boss the same day.

I read the Op a few times, but didnt see it.

Eta: when you said your trash had nothing there did you mean no messages, or just not the missing one?

13

I had trash, Ivory, but not the email I was looking for. I never confirmed that Jane is the one who took the apartment. I hollered back at her, but I didn’t get a response.

It was a hot apartment, so the boss could have rented it to someone else. I have zero proof that he rented it to Jane.

ETA: The truth is, hot apartments sometimes go lightning quick. Sometimes, they stay around way longer than anyone would guess. I just don’t know.

14

So the boss woud have deleted the email and then deleted from trash? Can an admin “disappear” an email from the inbox, I wonder. I once accidentally moved an email to sub folder and took forever to find. Any chance of that?

Crazy sitch, fer sure.

15

That would make me suspicious, especially if it’s one of the first things he did. “Con” in con man stands for “confidence”. They use that sort of bullshit story that a lot of people want to believe in to get others to trust them.

Did he go on about finding Jesus?

16

MichaelEmouse, most sales people do corny shit like that, though. I know sales people get a bad rap, but they aren’t all slimeballs. Just cornballs. So, it didn’t ring any alarms for me.

17

Not all deleted emails go to trash - can permanently delete it straight away if you wish…

But if someone is sneaky enough to steal a lead, I would assume they’re sneaky enough to also make sure the email is gone from trash (not all arseholes are clueless)

18

It isn’t possible that both Jane and your work email are on systems that would allow Jane to recall her email if she changed her mind? Looking at email from home may not mark it read at work in which case she may have just recalled it.

I would check out the possibility before blaming boss Microsoft Support

19

Outlook used to offer the option to delete a sent email after it was sent. I’m not sure how that worked, but if a sender can do this it may be what you ran into if Jane changed her mind.

You can have a separate gmail account pick up all your main account emails as duplicates, however you need to be sure to set the duplicating account NOT to remove emails from the web/cloud cache where they are stored when delivered to the duplicating account or they will not show up on your main mail account. The main account will be set to remove these emails from cloud storage once delivered.

A boss cherry picking deals is not unheard of, but it is very poor practice as it shortly becomes obvious and frustrated employees leave. Having said this real estate leasing and sales is all about being there. If you take off weekends or prime times you will miss deals. You decide where to strike the time balance.

20

Take notes, starting now, journal. If it’s all just coincidence, no harm no foul. If he’s garnered your complete trust with his hard coming through story, he’ll be working some more ‘coincidences’ and shady explanations, nuanced to keep you unsure. By the time you’re sure, it’s too late now, you’re already in deep. It’ll be harder to walk away once they owe you money, the more money the harder. If they are scamming you, they’ll pay you promptly initially, then things could slow down.

The point is, if you journal, it will add up to seeing the big picture sooner rather than later. If this is a bad set up, it will be way, way better to know sooner.good Luck!