You may well be right. There may not be anybody at the company who can get into accounts without the password, which may be why they asked.
FWIW, I would give them the passwords to any company accounts, including e-mail accounts on the company domain. Personal e-mail, like the hotmail one mentioned, I would not. But then again, I would not use a personal account for company business, or if I did, would be damn careful what I used it for.
There is an extremely strict company policy that no one is allowed to access personal e-mail from company systems. They terminated a bunch of people a while back for doing so. And there is all kinds of sniffers running as well. I doubt if a company small enough not to have a sysadmin person is going to have that, however.
If I had used a personal e-mail for company business, and it were possible, I would delete that personal e-mail account, and refuse to answer any questions about it.
I seem to remember a recent discussion on the Dope about whether it violated the right against self-incrimination to be compelled to produce a password. IIRC, it was a password on a laptop that someone had kiddie porn stashed on. I thought the person had to produce it, but they had a search warrant or something.
If the company has any sense, they will drop the request for passwords and just hire someone to hack into her e-mail and see what’s there.
I wonder what the status is of the theft charges, but hopefully, we won’t find out until Annie comes back to say that she has received a full apology and her job back. Or starts a thread entitled “Ask the Interstate Fugitive”.
On the passwords - a seconder for it could be any sort of membership / database / application passwords. All too often in small offices only one person knows these and the reset options are tedious, time consuming and very difficult (if not out right impossible)
Secondly, from personal experience in small offices. At times I have seen computers where there is no administrator account - just the user who has administrator rights. So say they set their own login password, and a screen saver password. Then its really HARD to access the data unless you take it to a very expensive professional.
You and I obviously worked for the same company. Remind me to tell you someday about the manager-level job I once quit by showing up one day hours late wearing shorts and flip flops to pick up my stuff. I told them to keep whatever money they owed me and never looked back. I am glad I had no access to any money whatsoever.
I am not going to jump to any conclusions (I can’t find my pogo stick), but I have no problem believing that a jerk boss would take advantage of a high-strung employee.
For the record, I have had three other jobs in my life, and not only did I remain in excellent terms with my other employers, I count one of my bosses as one of my very best friends.
Agreed, but that isn’t really her problem that their governance and security policies suck rocks and that they might now need to go through a lot of hassle and some expense to recover passwords or data - that is now their problem. Particularly after they have accused her of theft.
The question of “what is a freakout” is what stands out to me. If Annie is describing her reaction, in her home with the cops, as something substantially similar to numerous reactions she had in the workplace due to stress, I can only imagine that she either worked with the most tolerant and gentle people on earth (since she lasted there for 27 years) or “freaking out” is a shorthand way of saying hyperventilating and ranting a bit in a slightly loud voice, maybe with some hand flapping. Beyond that, and it seems unlikely that it would be a frequent occurence in the workplace – but at the same time, that alone shouldn’t be enough for police to get all worried. (But then, it’s been my experience that a lot of cops really cannot deal with emotional women, for love nor money.)
Where this all falls apart for me is this – why would the police call the complainant for information about Annie’s emotional state? She’s a biased party! She’s leveled an accusation of grand theft, she’s not going to be a source of accurate personal information. Now, maybe Annie doesn’t have any family, but she surely has friends and people that the police could’ve called to ask if she was mentally okay. That’s what’s fishy to me. There should never have been any kind of contact with the complaining business owner in that scenario, not legitimately. What could they have been thinking?
Possibly because Annie lives alone, and couldn’t provide the phone number or e-mail address of anyone else. So they went to her former boss because it was the only person for whom they had any kind of contact info.
Keep in mind that an ER physician and an intake counselor all agreed that she was upset enough to warrant at least an overnight stay in the hospital.
I don’t know that this is really the case. There are a lot of factors that can influence a situation like this, when played out in the real world, that have nothing to do with the best interest of the individual in question.
When someone is brought in by the police (or possibly other emergency personnell), they may be making a decision based more on liability than on any professional opinion of the individual’s state. I can’t imagine many people get released when they’ve been brought to the ER (or whatever department makes the initial determination) by the police.
Furthermore, to the degree that any determination was made based on the perceived state of mind that Annie had at the time, part of that determination is based on (presumably) false and damning information, hearsay that is certainly more compelling for sensational reasons than for it’s validity and verifiability.
Therapy? Sure. A nice, relaxing vacation? Sure. Involuntary committment? I don’t see how that was warranted, although I can see how some individuals involved in the decision-making process make take a “better safe than sorry” approach based on the kinds of information they had, and the system they were working in.
You weren’t there, so you have no idea what the condition of Annie X-mas was at the time she was taken in. It’s speculation at best to make statements about “how that was warranted.” In short, you’re talking out of your ass.
There are two ways of trying to determine what probably actually occurred. One is to take what Annie says at face value. The other is to look at what happened and figure out what that probably means.
Taking her statements at face value, we quickly run into some difficulties. According to Annie, police officers were about to arrest her on the basis of nothing more than the complain filed by her employer and her answers to some questions they asked. That alone is very unlikely; since the alleged crime had already been committed, the officers would not be able to arrest without a warrant. New Jersey may be an interesting place to live, but the Constitution does still apply there, including the Fourth and Fourteenth Amendments. Short of Annie admitting to the crime, no arrest was going to happen.
Secondly, by her statements, she was never actually arrested. If she was going to be arrested, she would have been arrested, then hauled off to the hospital for observation. The fact that they took her to the hospital but did not actually arrest her makes it clear that they never were going to arrest her.
Which is not to say she’s lying, just that her perception is not necessarily aligned with what was actually going to happen.
Now, judge what probably happened by what apparently did happen. This is also tough to do, since the only unambiguous aspects to what occurred are that police showed up, asked her about an alleged theft of money and took her to the hospital for possible involuntary commission in order to protect her from herself. We don’t really know what role the former employer played in this; the self-report from Annie that the police called the former employer about the fact that she was freaking out, got told that she’s “suicidal” and then took her in seems improbable. It would seem more likely that they had been told in advance by the former employer that she was unstable and possibly at times suicidal, witnessed an extreme reaction to some aspect of their presence (perhaps a request to come to the station for further questioning), and decided on the basis of what they saw to take her in for evaluation, whereupon her reactions were sufficient to warrant an involuntary hold.
Nope. I just wasn’t clear enough in expressing my point, which is that (from the information given, taken at whatever value we find reasonable, and in the absence of reason to believe otherwise), it’s far from established that Annie’s committment was based on a consensus agreement that she was upset enough to warrant it. Other factors quite likely were in play.
And in the absense of information that we just don’t have (and may not exist), I (still) don’t see how the committment was warranted. That’s opinion, yes, but not one that requires me to make up stuff. Regardless, it’s a second point and I could have made the distinction clearer.
My presumption is that otherwise is the case, but I could be wrong. I don’t work in the field, and have only researched a few cases like the “thud” experiment.
I do recall a conversation with a psychiatrist who stated that he would never release someone who had been brought to him in cuffs, citing liability as a concern. I’m reluctant to mention that, because it’s not much to base an argument on, but it is something that informs my perspective.
I also don’t have much by way of a concrete cite, but I used to work for a hospital system, and my analysis of admission data found that, on average, we lost money on the patients admitted thru the emergency room, and that included our behavioral units. So we tended not to make that the default.
My assumption - and it is no more than that - is that a patient would have to react more strongly than the understandable stress of being wrongly accused to make it into even an overnight stay in the psych ward. The police see a lot of things, and ER physicians even more. And, as I mentioned, the “freak out” was strong enough to get the cops to bring her in for a psych eval.
I guess I find it difficult to believe that “admit them overnight at least” would be the default. (I could be wrong, of course.) I’ve been wrongly accused, and although I was plenty upset, I did not cause anyone to haul me off to the psych ward. And it seems to me that the fact that someone lacked the ability to calm down enough to make a rational case to the ER physician that I had good reason to be upset - I was wrongly accused, and I quit my job of 27 years! - is an indication that at least something more than ordinary is going on.
This is especially so since the behavior persisted over several days. Not just freaking out and quitting, not just freaking out when accused, not just freaking out to the ER physician. bit also not eating, not sleeping, and not taking the prescribed medications.
And again - once she did start eating and sleeping and taking her meds, the problem disappeared.
It’s entirely possible - as I think we all agree, we don’t know. And probably never will, for sure.
I hope very sincerely that Annie X-mas continues to be well, and I hope none of this is offensive to her.
Attempting to form an opinion about the validity of what was done about someone allegedly not mentally well from the statements of the person in question is fraught with potential for error.
Actually, in the absence of some external way of judging how reliable that person’s statements are, it’s just plain stupid.
FWIW, I’ve had two experiences in the last year trying to get a family member held overnight and/or on a 72 hour hold for psych reasons. At two different hospitals, the criteria consisted of asking the patient “Are you suicidal?” and “Are you homicidal?” and as long as they were with it enough to say no to both questions, they were told to follow up with their regular physicians and/or therapists.
The second incident in particular was alarming as the person in question had been engaging in self-harming behaviors and was presenting as a danger to themselves, but since they answered that they weren’t feeling suicidal, it was right back out the door.
In following up with the psychiatrist later, they indicated that’s pretty much the standard. Hospitals with a regular psych ward are more likely to do a more in-depth consultation, hospitals that lack psych facilities and would have to hold the patient and arrange transfers are less likely to want to get any more involved than is absolutely necessary.
So my WAG is that Annie may have said something in her anger like “She said I stole $5K? I could kill her!” and combined with the “She’s unstable” they got from the boss, that might have been enough to give the cops and doctors reason to believe better safe than sorry. I have no idea what she said, obviously, but the same kind of things we all say in the heat of the moment look quite different when held up to that kind of spotlight.
In my experience working in emergency departments it is true that more are released than hospitalized. I can’t tell you how many patients I have truly believed were in desperate need of help, but were released by the psych staff.
I am a counselor with 21 years of experience in the field, including 4 psychiatric facilities, 5 college counseling centers, years of psychiatric crisis intervention, and years of private practice. It’s difficult to get someone committed or even held for observation unless there is significant concern that the person poses a danger to self or others or has impaired judgment to the extent that they might become harmful. As mentioned above, the hospital often winds up eating the cost of hospitalizations. More importantly, it’s illegal to detain people without reasonably compelling evidence. I’m not saying that it doesn’t happen sometimes that a person is wrongfully held. I don’t know what the OP’s experience was and I’m not going to comment on it, other than to say that sometimes both parties, potential patient and hospital, will be utterly convinced that they were very reasonable and that the other’s behavior was outrageous
Edited to add: My experience has more often been how frustrating it is to try to get someone hospitalized, voluntarily, and have the hospital turn them away for not meeting criteria of being suicidal or impaired enough.
In my experience, hospitals with psych wings normally use them for the 72-hour hold, and that’s it. Patients don’t stay there for more than three days.
If it’s determined that a patient needs further care, they’re transferred to a dedicated psych facility. When we picked up at a psych wing that was situated in a medical hospital, it was to take them to a psychiatric hospital, because the 72 hours were up and the insurance wouldn’t cover any more time there, and the psych hospitals offered a higher level of care, or more in-depth treatment.
Of course, this will vary by state, various protocols, and insurance regs.
I know of a few hospitals that have Psych floors. Monmouth Medical in Long Branch, NJ is one. A few of the others also have these floors where patients stay longer than 3 days. NJ also closed many of their psychiatric hospitals including Marlboro which was a very large one.