So whats in the file you have on your boss? And your other co-workers?
I hate the real world.
They need the eggs.
On official Dukes of Hazzard stationery.
You guys are acting all weird; I thought the OP brought a very interesting ethical conundrum to us. We can all go online, and we can all look up any and every co-worker if we choose; what we do with what we find is a very good question, and one that we’ll be dealing with more and more, I believe.
Well, it is a little different than that I would say. In this instance the OP is looking up information on coworker, and specifically looking for negative information on a coworker, upon which the OP would put the most negative spin - and having this conversation with management without said coworker’s knowledge or ability to defend himself.
For me that strikes at the heart of fairness. Some people believe it is OK to say bad things about people, and state those opinions as fact without them having an opportunity to defend themselves and that is how they like to conduct themselves. I think in the workplace, just like anywhere else, a small number of people want to operate on that level.
Me, I prefer to not operate like that and would have no desire to work with anyone who does.
As a practical matter, would a manager want to spend time and energy listening to everything that every coworker finds on the internet that may or may not have relevance to anything? Would management want to have to constantly defend its hiring decisions to people who think they know better all the time? I think not, that is time wasted to them. Most people, as well was managers prefer to work with people who do not act this way.
The process really was more like this:
- The guy is hired. Seems nice enough, quite friendly and chatty
- After a couple of months there are some red flags that indicate something is “off” about the guy.
- Just from idle curiosity (maybe a sense of foreboding), I google the nickname that he uses in our company chat rooms. It turns up some postings of a person who seems very mentally unbalanced.
- I check his (rather distinctive) name against public arrest and court records and learn about his criminal history and current charges against him.
So I wasn’t on a vendetta or anything… just idle curiosity led me from thinking this guy is a harmless kook, to the realization that he’s facing fresh charges for domestic violence. There’s no spin, it’s all public record.
I’ll preface my response with the information that I am a Human Resources professional of many years standing.
My best advice to you is to say nothing. I realize that this is difficult, but this is a situation in which you are unlikely to come away a winner.
Some things to consider:
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I don’t know your state of residence, but there are laws in some states that prohibit a company from making a hiring decision based on a criminal record, even an active criminal investigation, if it is not directly related to the work they are hired to perform. If this is the case, your employer may already have a full deck of information on this employee and have hired him anyway.
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As his problem seems to be with domestic abuse issues, it is unlikely to be an issue in a work environment, unless, of course, his family works there, too.
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As others have mentioned, there is a stigma against snitches, or anyone perceived as a snitch. Office grapevines are notoriously fast and while often over-the-top, can be quite accurate. You will lose the trust of your other co-workers if you rat on this one. That may or may not be an acceptable risk to you, but you should be aware of the risk.
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Regarding the additional workload, is your co-worker’s impending legal trouble common knowledge in your work group? If so, you might want to suggest to an immediate superivsor that you formulate a contingency plan in case someone in your department has to bow out. You can even do this if it ISN’T common knowledge. Just use the justification that the workload is heavy and really requires multiple people to do it and you think someone should be cross-trained to help in case of any lengthy absence, medical for example.
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If you are uncomfortable with exposing your family to this individual, I would take that concern to your immediate supervisor. Tell him or her that you prefer to bow out of the group bonding activities if he is a part of them. And if your supervisor asks why, then you have the perfect opportunity to tell him. I would wait until the issue arises, as from what you have said, his legal problems may lead to him leaving the company soon in any case.
I know none of this is probably of much comfort to you, but as others have said, if your company has an employee assistance program (a hot line for complaints or a method of reporting an issue anonymously), I would strongly suggest you contact them and tell them your concerns. They do not report back to your company with any names, just with what the concerns are and how many people have expressed that concern. If you company uses an employee assistance program, there are counselors available who are accustomed to working with sticky situations and could give you some professional advice on how to handle the problem.
Good luck.
There is no spin:dubious:? Your certainty that he will be convicted could be considered “spin” in many circles; probably in pretty much every circle. Really you are not saying much new or materially relevant here that would effectively make me consider my original interpretation of the situation. YMMV
Dont say a word. If you do, it can only be bad for you.
Think about this: they fire the guy, he finds out it was you- bad things happen.
They dont fire the guy, he finds out it was you- bad things happen.
HR considers you a snitch or implying they are not doing their job.
Nothing good can happen. Only bad.
Now if he was stealing from the company or something then it’d be a different issue.
I don’t see the big deal either - yeah people should mind their business, but I might have done the same thing if I was really concerned about something.
That being said - if he gets fired - the OP will still be in the lurch.
As to how the back ground check missed it - keep in mind that - most background checks (I believe) fall under the FCRA - and have a limited 7 year time span for arrests (still within the range of what happened). Not all court records are online or available - and how much they are used varies by state.
If they are using some automated service - then that service - if doing it for the purpose of employment has to ensure accuracy - this is easy to do with credit reports in theory - cause you have a SSN as a single identifier - but not always with court records - which usually don’t use SNNs. They would probably need to match name, address, and date of birth in order to conclusively say that record belonged to X person. Anything else would likely result in identifying the wrong person enough times that they would eventually get in trouble. So the “bigger” companies are actually likely to exclude any info they can’t positively tie to an individual.
If they are hiring someone to do a detailed check of records (which again is going to probably have iffy issues legally) then they would have to check each county or state where this person lived. So if the employer doesn’t know about them - he/she probably isn’t going to pay someone to check every county/state.
Keep in mind also - that in general - the Feds/local/state governments won’t do criminal history checks without a fingerprint card - and often you need to be in a certain type of job to get this type of check done.
One last thing - in at least one state (California) - and I’m guessing others as well - it is illegal to check for arrests that did not result in a conviction (which would make it almost impossible to do such a check yourself). IANAL - but it wouldn’t surprise me if a court might find - if the OP were in the State of California - and provided this information to their employer - and he was fired for it - the OP might be considered an agent - and therefore in breach of California Law.
Not sure how many states if any are like CA.
Personally I don’t think I’d say anything - as you already mentioned - either way you are screwed. Of course unless he isn’t convicted and turns out to be an ok employee. I’m not in anyway saying any level of domestic violence is ok, but I doubt you know the full story. There are I’m sure more than one relationship where people are mutually abusive to each other.
If someone has served his time - he’s gonna have to work somewhere - people might not like it, but unless we are going to lock them up for life - someone is gonna have to deal with him.
People with somewhat seedy backgrounds often aren’t as polished as other people - if you aren’t used to it - it can make some people uncomfortable.
One hopes your boss has contingency plans for anyone leaving suddenly. If you decide to leave, who takes over your work?
If you knew nothing about his background, but his work was shoddy for whatever reason, what would you do? That is exactly what you should do now. If you are getting unacceptable stuff from him, talk to him, and if that doesn’t work, document it and talk to your boss about it. That is a valid workplace concern. His record isn’t.
Also, please consider the possibility that your manager knows all about it. Managers can’t share performance information about one person with others. I managed a guy who was a real problem. Plenty of people told me about him - but I couldn’t tell them that it was being worked. Sometimes people think bosses are being blind and stupid when they are just being discrete.
BTW, won’t he be off work for a while for his trial?
The thing is, bad things can happen no matter whether the OP reports or stays silent. You just have to weigh the relative risks.
For example, in some companies the social activities are organized by other staff, NOT the supervisor. It’s not a formal company event, so telling the boss you don’t want to participate would be a bad move, but if you don’t participate, then you get yourself a reputation as “not a team player,” which is career-limiting every bit as much as a reputation as a snitch.
There’s also the more remote possibility that his violent streak (if it is real) won’t be confined to the spouse. What happens if tempers flare in the workplace? How would you feel if you knew/suspected he had violent tendencies, said nothing, and then got to watch while a co-worker was attacked? What would your company and co-workers think of your silence?
There was a sort-of-similar situation I recall: somebody seemingly okay, but somebody else got bad vibes and did some investigating. There was no significant criminal record, but they did find a pattern of disturbing postings, and reported it. Management did nothing at the time, and to my knowledge the targeted individual never knew about the report, but when there was a round of layoffs management took extra security precautions concerning that individual. (Nothing bad happened at that time; he’s doing serious prison time for an incident outside of work later on.) How many incidents of violence (workplace or otherwise) have followed by somebody later saying, “I thought there was something off about Joe.”?
Several points, if you are employed in the real world:
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Your coworker has not been convicted this time out. If you are in the US, there’s something called presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Even if you think the dude should be locked up for life because he has had brushes with the law in the past and you believe him to be guilty is not a conviction/jail sentence by a judge and jury.
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If you rat him out, no one that you work with, up or down the food chain, will trust you. Try working in those conditions.
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If he is locked up and you are handed his projects, although it will take some work, you will come out smelling like a rose if you improve them. Unless your manager is a moron, s/he knows that your coworker does crap work.
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If you are transferred to his city, be civil to him, but keep your distance. You don’t have to grill out with him on the weekends or even hang out at the bar if you don’t want to.
Be out on a service call the day he comes in to clear out his desk.
The guy has 10 previous misdemeanor convictions, one for domestic violence. He has one domestic violence case dismissed without prejudice (because the victim recanted). Shockingly, he now has a case in the works (same victim, shockingly enough). Domestic violence… and “attempted false imprisonment” (I don’t even know).
Do you suppose this is all just shouting and love slaps? TBH the only reason I haven’t already gone vigilante is because there’s a newborn infant involved (of course). Thus I leave it to the courts. He works at home fulltime, so there’s no risk of a workplace shootout.
Again, thanks to all for the huge portfolio of advice. I’m saying nothing unless there’s a work-related meltdown, and in the meantime I’m looking for other work.
Well, some of what you are saying are statements of fact, and others are statement of opinion (i.e. spin). You have some facts and some spin; what do you want from me, to just agree with you when you say you have no spin when it seems to be irrefutable that you are adding you own opinion along with many statement of facts?
I’m taking a lengthy statement of facts and drawing one reasonable inference from them. I don’t expect you to agree with the inference, but I take you to task for characterizing it as mere “spin” when the individual has 10 prior convictions including domestic violence, 1 prior arrest including the same, and is now again charged with the same. I don’t claim this in itself meets the standard for conviction, but it meets the standard for believing that he probably did it.
Not long before I left my old employer, a hospital, in 2010, we had a department meeting and were told by upper management that each department was indeed going to start having designated snitches, whose identity would be kept secret from other members of the department! :dubious: :eek: :smack: Honestly, it wouldn’t have been any secret because we all knew exactly who they would choose to do this.
Shortly afterwards, one of them started working the same hours as me, taking all her breaks with me, etc. and I knew exactly what was going on.
You have a point there, now that I think about it. Spin would imply that you are twisting or manipulating facts, which you are not doing; the inferences you are drawing are reasonable.
I don’t think we’ll come to agreement on the bigger picture really though; I just have an extreme aversion to making a judgement when only hearing one side of a story. You may be right, about everything he may be a bad person, but your way of going about it disagrees with me, and that just comes down to personal priorities. Everyone is going to have different priorities I believe, it’s not really a point that can be argued and comes down to what one feels is important.
Well, this thread just got interesting. What was she trying to catch you doing?