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agonyaunt2022-04-19 11:20 pm
minoanmiss) wrote in agonyaunt2022-04-19 11:20 pm
Entry tags:
Ask a Manager: Coworker Went Through My Trash
[n.b. there is soooooo much more to the story.]
1. My coworker went through my trash and showed my boss my doodles. I work in a law firm and was recently off with Covid. During this time, a coworker (I haven’t been told who) went through my trash bin to find a list of things I had done before leaving (why they looked there I do not know). Sometimes on my break I write doodles (song lyrics/pictures/movie quotes), which include Eminem songs.
Whoever went through my bin found my doodles instead of the lists and decided to tape the ripped ones back together and hand them to the senior partner of the firm. She brought me in to speak to me about these notes and told me that it wasn’t an invasion of my privacy because they were looking for a list. I explained the swear words were part of song lyrics and I am a doodler. However, I never expected any of it to be read or passed about the office and I feel humiliated.
Was this an invasion of my privacy? I just feel like whoever did this has just done it to embarrass me. I got no warning, just told to take my doodles home, which I 100% will be doing. But I feel that since they didn’t find what they were looking for, they should have put my doodles back in the bin.
There’s not a very high expectation of privacy at work, but going through your trash and taping papers back together is weird as hell unless there were some kind of dire emergency and the papers seemed to be what were needed to resolve the emergency. I’m assuming it was pretty clear to your coworker that doodles and song lyrics were … not that.
I don’t know what would have possessed your colleague to spend time taping your papers back together, let alone bring them to your boss. The correct response from your boss would have been, “That looks like her trash, please throw it back away.” No one should have any feelings at all about you choosing to doodle on your breaks.
Any chance this is a misunderstanding because the lyrics were violent or threatening in some way? If so, maybe that triggered your coworker’s concern … but once you explained the situation, that should have been the end of it. Either way, it’s best to keep lyrics and doodles at work relatively clean and non-violent going forward.
1. My coworker went through my trash and showed my boss my doodles. I work in a law firm and was recently off with Covid. During this time, a coworker (I haven’t been told who) went through my trash bin to find a list of things I had done before leaving (why they looked there I do not know). Sometimes on my break I write doodles (song lyrics/pictures/movie quotes), which include Eminem songs.
Whoever went through my bin found my doodles instead of the lists and decided to tape the ripped ones back together and hand them to the senior partner of the firm. She brought me in to speak to me about these notes and told me that it wasn’t an invasion of my privacy because they were looking for a list. I explained the swear words were part of song lyrics and I am a doodler. However, I never expected any of it to be read or passed about the office and I feel humiliated.
Was this an invasion of my privacy? I just feel like whoever did this has just done it to embarrass me. I got no warning, just told to take my doodles home, which I 100% will be doing. But I feel that since they didn’t find what they were looking for, they should have put my doodles back in the bin.
There’s not a very high expectation of privacy at work, but going through your trash and taping papers back together is weird as hell unless there were some kind of dire emergency and the papers seemed to be what were needed to resolve the emergency. I’m assuming it was pretty clear to your coworker that doodles and song lyrics were … not that.
I don’t know what would have possessed your colleague to spend time taping your papers back together, let alone bring them to your boss. The correct response from your boss would have been, “That looks like her trash, please throw it back away.” No one should have any feelings at all about you choosing to doodle on your breaks.
Any chance this is a misunderstanding because the lyrics were violent or threatening in some way? If so, maybe that triggered your coworker’s concern … but once you explained the situation, that should have been the end of it. Either way, it’s best to keep lyrics and doodles at work relatively clean and non-violent going forward.