My boss insists that every piece of mail received in this office, no matter who it is addressed to, must be given to her so that she can open it, even when the mail is clearly addressed to someone else. I’m not talking about just advertisements and third class mail, but first class mail clearly addressed to someone in another department. All the mail passes my desk, so I know that the proper addressee never receives many pieces of mail. Is this legal? She claims she can do this because it came to the business address so it is company business, even when the mail is not addressed specifically to her.
Yes, she can do that, according to this.
I didn’t see part of your post. If addressees are not receiving mail addressed to them, she is comitting a federal crime. She may open the mail, for legitimate business reasons, but may NOT obstruct it, nor open it for the purpose of prying.
What type of business is it and how large is the company? I don’t know about the legal aspects of it, but she has got serious control issues. I’m pretty sure that opening everybody’s mail falls squarely within “Bad People Management Techniques.”
According to this your boss is full of crap. If you can get to a copy of United States Code Annotated, you can find out if there are any cases interpretting the statute, but it seems pretty clear. At least for mail addressed to an individual, you can’t open the mail without the individual’s permission. If the mail is addressed to the company, and sent to someone’s attention, anyone at the company can probably open it.
You can also contact the postal inspection service and complain, but I would expect you to be fired, if you did that. You might have a claim for retaliatory termination under various whistleblower laws, but I bet your employer would fire you and try to sort things out later. Just a hunch.
Good site Q. Thanks. I did not see this post before I responded.
You’re not reading the statute fully:
As I said earlier, if the boss has a legitimate reason to open the mail, she is allowed to. However, obstructiong or destroying it is not permitted.
Bolding mine.
When I worked at Morgan Stanley the head secretary would open all mail, regardless of to whom it was addressed. She would then time and date stamp it, log it and release it to whomever it was addressed. I think there was some company policy regarding this.
I also had to make a log of all my phone calls and what they were regarding. These came in handy when we had a client try to sue us for placing trades he never ordered.
So don’t think that what is happening in the OP is all that uncommon.
Has your boss said why she’s opening them? I would be there’s some debate over what “legitimate business reasons” might be.
I would agree that your boss has serious control issues to say nothing of apparently not enough work to do.
As a secretary at a previous job, I used to open all mail and then distribute it. If you received something personal in the mail, it would be opened. Confidential I had to open - everything was stamped as to date received and such. That is why I never have anyone send me anything to work. EVER.
Strongly agreed. I worked for a small British editorial firm with the same practice, and it caused serious inefficiency. On a number of occasions I missed urgent deadlines because the secretary (the MD’s wife - it was one of those nepotistic setups) decided to take the morning off, and I wasn’t allowed access to my mail, even clearly-labelled envelopes containing scheduled material from regular correspondents.
The legal situation is much the same here, but whether it’s done comes largely down to management style. To me - whatever the practical reasons - it suggests a fear of the loss of control that delegation involves (and unfortunately that’s the kind of mindset that will have a very hostile reaction if you were to dispute the practice).
I don’t know the legal aspects, but the easiest solution is to not have your personal mail sent to the office, and never involve yourself in any exchanges you would not wish your boss to know about.
I worked for a mid-sized S&L for many years and EVERY piece of mail was opened in the presence of one of the top two bank officers. They didn’t read the stuff, they were looking for and recording cash in a ledger. The reason for the procedure was to protect the bank against customer claims they had sent cash and it was not credited to their account. On occassion should claims were made, but it then was the word of the bank president etc, that stopped the complaint pretty quick when they were informed of the procedure.
About one or two days a month both officers would be out of the office. Each time this happened, a written note was made and signed by one or the other prior, giving authority to the next higher official to supervise the cash by mail procedure.
If you work for a company, your email is the property of that company. It is not your private email. Beware of what you write and inform your email recipients to beware of writing anything damaging to your company. Remember that email is proprietary to the company. When I was working for a large company we were all told that email is a priviledge and not a right.
robcaro:
I’m sure this is true if you’re using the company’s computer and sending and receiving email from the email account that the company gave you.
It might be less true (though probably not 100% untrue) if you’re using your own computer and sending and receiving email using your own personal email account, possibly even using your own computer as SMTP server instead of referencing their email server, but (pretty much unavoidably) relying on their pipes to connect you to the internet.
(Such is my circumstance).
To hazard a guess, I would say that I would not stand a chance in court if I tried to sue the company for cacheing or sniffing my inbound or outbound email and making use of it somehow; but that if they brought me into court and tried to take action based on information acquired in that fashion (let’s say they do not merely wish to discharge me but also sue me for breach of contract or something), the court might rule that I had a reasonable expectation of privacy and state that they can’t use it.
(If I’d been officially told, verbally or in writing, that all email was company property, that would be different, though)
Better yet, have a copy of the statute mailed to someone in your company!
When my sister worked for a financial services company, she told me that every piece of mail was open and read, to make sure it didn’t include some illegal or off-the-record transaction with a broker. (She had to log her phone calls for the same reason). She told me never to send any mail to her at the office, not even her annual birthday package. She’d rather just go to the post office and pick it up on on her day off.
Where I work, there are no transactions, but the office manager opens every piece of mail to look for invoices or checks.
Hmm, clearly I was working for a bad company. I appreciate that there are often valid legal/financial reasons for logging mail. The poor management and control-freakery was in their having no procedure for delegating the task.