She doesn’t have to give up her own email password. That isn’t needed. If she feels compelled to give a reason for not sharing her email password, she can say it’s the same password she uses for some personal accounts and doesn’t want to share it. The email admin can view all email accounts and reset all passwords. Unfortunately, that means that none of the emails on the company server are really private. The new owner can read everything.
I think most of what i would say has been covered, but i have two comments:
-
laws on recording conversations vary by state, but in many states it’s illegal unless both parties are aware of it. That’s why you hear that recorded message about calls being recorded for training and quality purposes. If you or your wife wants to record any conversations with the old boss, either check your laws, or be careful to disclose that at the start of each phone call. “Just so you know, I’m recording this call.”
-
not central to this story, but it came up in the link and i happen to know the answer: if you get into an accident driving to pick up your boss’ lunch at your boss’ instructions on company time, and you are injured, that injury is covered by workers’ comp. You’re probably on your own for damage to the car, though.
Lol, the passwords are of course theirs. Shame about the typos.
Fuck that noise. You opened yourself up by firing her: now you’re gonna bleed.
A “one time consultanting fee” to show them how to properly enter the combination should be worth ~5000$ (or 3x) more than the safe and its contents.
They already fired you, what are they going to do to you?
Hope so.
Her work email is the property of the business. The fact that she conducted personal business on it is her own fault. She has no right to withhold the password. It makes no difference whether it was the business contact email or not. In the future, if she has personal business on work email (a very bad idea in the first place), she can delete them and hope they’re not backed up someplace.
That is not correct. They have the rights to the account, not her password.
Recently retired IT professional.
Any Email system used by a business should make the account access easily accessible to the appropriate person in IT. I sadly had too do this all to often on one long term job.
In theory she should have no access to the account herself by this time. But not keeping personal business on work email is excellent advice.
If the company has insurance coverage you may be covered under their policy. That’s been the case in the last 3 jobs I’ve been at.
I’m just struck by the “pick my child up from daycare” requirement. They can’t just release a child to whoever shows up that day. It has to be someone already designated in writing.
That would have ended badly.
Doesn’t that vary by state?
It’s the boring, safe answer, but see an employment lawyer. We had to use one twice in the last few years. They worked on contingency, and they ended up serving us well both times. Talk to a lawyer – it needn’t be expensive. I’d have to ask my wife – there may have been a minor consultation fee, but we ended up with a much nicer severance in both cases and a better termination agreement overall. Just get the lawyer.
It might. But I’m guessing daycare policies are all pretty similar regardless of state law, in order to cover their own asses in a civil suit.
Which is why my sentence began, “In the future”, which you dropped in the quote.
When I worked, we kept a records of passwords needed for access to the building. These were changed whenever a person no longer worked there.
No one knew personal passwords, but IT could look into the computer or network files when needed after you left.
Damn sorry about that. I honestly missed those important words. Well as I said, good advice.
Good point.
That has indeed been the standard for 20 years or more. Many bigger places, much longer.
Yeah. My Wife and I work for the same county, so it’s VERY easy to put personal communication into a work email. I work IS and am trying to weed her off of doing that.
It gets a bit crazy. Work email, work Zoom, work Teams, IM’s on Slack, personal email, personal text, and phone.
I use personal text or phone for personal stuff (need anything from the store?). But sometimes need to contact her via work email because it’s work. Our jobs are related. Her department uses our departments data an we theirs.
And reset it to something else. They will never get to your password.
[Adam Savage] “Well, there’s your problem!”[/AS]
:flees:
Generally, yes.
IT has the ability to change passwords, they must in order to keep things operational. Even in a small business. Note that “IT” might be a dedicated person or team, or just a person who wears that hat along with doing other things (generally this is only in a very small business, as in less than a dozen employees).
In my first real IT job, which was in a fairly small business (less than 100 people in the whole company), I knew and kept track of other employees’ passwords. Also, this was 20 years ago.
Since then, every other place I’ve worked had some kind of centralized system that kept track of the passwords (Active Directory in each case, though there are other systems in existence). You don’t need to know people’s passwords, nor would you want to, but you can do other things that make such a thing moot. I might not know your password, but if I change it to “Password123!” (not a good password) then it doesn’t matter what it was before. You can also disable or delete accounts if a person leaves the company (usually disable it for a while then it deletes at a certain point).
That’s how a properly-run business works, anything bigger than a little “mom-and-pop” entity.
This sounds like a clear case of calling the boss’s bluff, but it makes me curious: from a legal standpoint, what counts as termination? Does your employment end the moment your boss says the magic words “You’re fired” (or, in this case, “Do this or you’re fired”)? Or is some more formal followup required before you’re officially considered unemployed? Is this a matter of company policy or state law or …?
If it’s a standard expectation that they communicated to their insurer, sure. In a case like this one, where a boss just randomly starts asking staff to run personal errands, it might not be so clear.