Question for Office Types

[Citroënbender]

A modestly large local entity which we are engaged with as clients, has inadvertently shared almost 200 client email addresses by selecting CC instead of BCC on an informational email.

Definitely not their usual manner, they are big on discreetness and privacy. We aren’t particularly fussed, there is negligible risk ongoing other than perhaps nuisance emails from other recipients who haven’t locked down their own accounts so well (remember Plaxo and LinkedIn taking over peoples’ email address books).

What I’m curious about, is how would the employee of several years who made this mistake, typically be treated by an employer? Would they be given strong hints to leave, or just be called in for a chat with senior managers to see if there was any help needed?

[Cav]

Originally Posted by Citroënbender

A modestly large local entity which we are engaged with as clients, has inadvertently shared almost 200 client email addresses by selecting CC instead of BCC on an informational email.

Definitely not their usual manner, they are big on discreetness and privacy. We aren’t particularly fussed, there is negligible risk ongoing other than perhaps nuisance emails from other recipients who haven’t locked down their own accounts so well (remember Plaxo and LinkedIn taking over peoples’ email address books).

What I’m curious about, is how would the employee of several years who made this mistake, typically be treated by an employer? Would they be given strong hints to leave, or just be called in for a chat with senior managers to see if there was any help needed?

I'd say you're stuffed Citroënbender

[aussiblue]

Recognise that everyone makes a genuine mistake sometimes and if it was a genuine non-malicious error by an otherwise conscientious hardworking long term employee that doesn't habitually make mistakes say nothing and just wear it. They likely will already know they stuffed up and feel extremely bad about it. But also do your TQM checks to ensure that there is nothing in you processes, systems or practices that increases the risk of such mistakes and see what can be done in terms of your processes, systems and practices to prevent another occurrence. Ultimately it's the employer who is responsible even if only in the context of recruiting or training practices.

[roKWiz]

Promoted to vice president.

[FTE217]

Well said aussieblue.
CB as you even said, not their norm and discreet - afraid shit happens with office staff even the best of them.
I have had it happen a few times in error by 2 good dependable long serving employees.
They know they stuffed up and regret it deeply for they hate error.
If it was done by a perennial offending employee you can only give them an official warning unless they are up to the third you can boot them out.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[Honest Gaza]

If an honest mistake...not much you can do except maybe send out an apology via BCC this time.

We have to do this almost daily...and each time I am worried I will inadvertently add them to CC.

[Citroënbender]

There’s been crickets so far, to be honest I would have half expected something like a BCC’d apology as described.

What was hardest for me, was not scanning the address list to see if I recognised any names. It’s human nature to be curious in these situations but more important for me to respect the privacy others enjoyed in the first place.

[b0son]

Pretty harmless in the scheme of things. Nothing worth warning an employee over.

I remember one of our employees, in the early 2000s (ie. when ADSL was still relatively new and 256k was considered broadband) was doing a mass mailout of a newsletter that was in full print quality. Never occurred to them to reduce the file size. She only realised there was a problem when customers started complaining their mailboxes were filling up, and the attachment was so big their mail client was crashing before the download finished, forcing them to restart the download from scratch. A lot of unhappy campers....

[arm79]

It would depend on the business and how strict/bitchy they are. Some have zero tolerance... Some recognise mistakes happen.

Last year I accidentally invoiced a customer $4400 for an event and it should have been $14,800. Still have no earthly idea how I did that given the checks I make when constructing invoices.

It was actually the CEO who caught it. Asked me a random unrelated question regarding the event and when he saw the invoice he said "nah, more than that". I looked it up and I was definitely wrong.

So I corrected it, advised the customer I made a boo boo and resent it. Told the CEO and apologised as I know a mini storm was brewing. He just laughed and said "shit happens. But it won't be long before they are over here for a chat". And he was right, they were there in 45 mins.

Not that there was much to complain about, this was a invoice to feed and booze up some 240 people. They knew $4400 was wrong and tried to hide it. Not that they could, it would have been picked up regardless.

My boss is a bit of stickler for customer focused professionalism, so when I told him I got a "be careful, don't do again. We shouldn't look like jackasses in front of our customers" chat. And we all moved on.

One of my tasks is to monitor and compile the accounting on the food and drinks park of the venue I work at. We run a monthly cash variance of between $250 to $800 a month. Basically people press wrong buttons on the till or cant count. But rather remarkable given this is across somewhere between $1m and $1.2m in a month.

Most often its because someone presents a free drink voucher and the bar staff will hit say $5 cash instead of $5 voucher to tender it, thus the cash count is out. If I see one every now and then, I say nothing, stuff happens, they are busy. If I see the same person do it a few times across a shift or couple of days I'll let their manager know and just say "remind X to slow down and press the right buttons".

I presented 3 errors of this type to a manager one day and he remarked he was stunned "no one cared about this sort of thing here. In previous venues he'd worked at, each one of those errors would be a written warning".

So it all comes down to the culture and understanding in the business, which is obviously variable.

Problem might arise if there is a Karen in that list of emails and they believed there was an expectation of privacy. Then its a whole different ball game.