Ask a Manager: How to tell your boss a sex worker stole your work laptop

[ermingarden]

I have a question on behalf of a friend (yes, I promise it is actually a friend and not me). He was staying overnight on a business trip and decided to hire a sex worker. This is perfectly legal in our part of the world and he used his own personal funds. While he was in the bathroom, the sex worker robbed him, including his work laptop. How should he go about informing work what happened?

In theory he could just explain that he had an “acquaintance” come back to his room and not proactively volunteer that the acquaintance was a sex worker, but the company will likely want him to file a police report (and will wonder why he hasn’t done that already). Once that happens, it’s going to be hard to avoid the rest of the story coming out … and that could potentially be very bad for your friend (not necessarily that he hired a sex worker but that he did it on a business trip and it resulted in the theft of company property, and possibly sensitive company property). He’d be more likely to keep his job if the laptop got lifted from a restaurant or other public place. It’s a bad situation.

Comments

[ermingarden]

The poor decision-making in this one is just...something else. Wow.

[shanaqui]

I feel like this is a non-answer, though to be honest I don't think there's a "save this guy's job" answer here.

Still, since it's legal to hire a sex worker in that part of the world, then he should start by filing the police report, and just report to work that the laptop was stolen from his hotel room, and that he's filed a police report. If they need more details than that, he may have to come clean; since it's an error of judgement rather than an illegal act, and he's a guy, you never know -- it might be viewed as stupid but not worth firing him for right away, depending on the workplace culture.

Lying about the situation will definitely not go anywhere good when he is inevitably caught.

[minoanmiss]

Yeah, I'm a little surprised at the non-answer because Alison isn't usually squeamish about sex work. I think your answer is more practical.

[bikergeek]

Regardless of legality, a lot of people still see hiring a sex worker as something shameful. Even in countries where it's legal there's a fair amount of public concern over sex workers and human trafficking. (and please, let's not have that debate here.) And/or that hiring a sex worker is perceived as a "means of last resort" for "incels" who do not meet conventional standards for physical attractiveness, "have no 'game'", etc., and "can't get laid".

If it got out that he'd hired a sex worker, that fact could cause serious damage to his professional reputation. Also, the company may not want to be known as one that hires the sort of people who would hire a sex worker, even if it's done with personal funds, on one's own time.

[cimorene]

That all makes sense, but it does make it sound, to me, like the guy actually needs regionally specific advice. The cultural mores and the opinions at work and how they're likely to be affected matter and so does the legal aspect. It could be that attempting to conceal the truth to a greater or lesser extent is his best bet.

[movingfinger]

Reporting that the laptop was "stolen from his hotel room" will direct attention at hotel employees, unjustly. Guy needs to admit that he hired a sex worker and was robbed.

[shanaqui]

I think you've read my comment as saying he should lie by omission to the police, i.e. then throwing suspicion on hotel workers, which is not what I said. I said he should make a police report (i.e. acquaint them with all the details), and then, separately, tell work that it was stolen from his hotel room and a police report has been made. That should have no impact on the hotel workers, though if some kind of complaint is going to be made then he would have to come clean.

[ambyr]

I do wonder sometimes whether anyone’s done a broad analysis of increase of loss of company-owned IT equipment in a hybrid/WFH world. The assumption our IT office seems to have is “well, you’ll drive it from the secure office to your private, secure home in your private automobile,” which…does not align great with the actual lives of young urban professionals around here, who are likely to live in group houses where they may or may not know all the guests coming and going and commute via transit, where bag-snatching is a common problem.

[tielan]

My first instinct was a big giggle.

I would tell the truth, but that's because I don't have the facility or luck or chops or whatever to be able to lie my way through the cops and HR and whoever else I'd have to tell this story.

[azurelunatic]

The LW shows up in the comments; the eventual solution that the friend came up with was to describe the situation as a "date".