Urban legend? Employee mass mails salary info to whole company?

September 15, 2004 6:12 PM

I vaguely recall hearing about an employee emailing his/her company's confidential salary information to all employees. I've googled and Snoped, but to no avail. I know this was in some commercial, but did it happen in real life?
posted by found missing to work & money (14 comments total)

It was in a dilbert strip a couple of months back.
posted by Space Coyote at 6:25 PM on September 15, 2004

I don't think this is uncommon, and I know it's not just an urban legend, since this--or something similar--has happened at places I've worked at. Once, a spreadsheet with the salaries of all the executives was mailed out to the wrong, company-wide e-mail list, and another time, a spreadsheet with everyone's current stock shares/options was mailed out. Needless to say, it was a huge morale boost, both times.
posted by LairBob at 6:58 PM on September 15, 2004

hmm. Not where I heard it, since I don't follow Dilbert. I tried pulling up that cartoon but it looks like the Dilbert archive goes back only about a month. #@(&#!!! corporate &%##s!!!
posted by found missing at 6:59 PM on September 15, 2004

I don't know about salaries. I do know that where I work a directory was left open in a managers directory, read permissions were left on a spreadsheet and that spreadsheet contained a list of people about to be laid off.

The person who found the information was fired, the manager was well, left a manager despite a horrible demonstration of how untrustworthy they were with securing confidential information.
posted by substrate at 7:04 PM on September 15, 2004

About four years ago, I actually received, mistakenly, email containing confidential salary information that I was not supposed to know. So it does indeed happen sometimes. HR people occasionally just don't know what the hell they're doing.
posted by majick at 7:56 PM on September 15, 2004

About four years ago, I actually received, mistakenly, email containing confidential salary information that I was not supposed to know. So it does indeed happen sometimes. HR people occasionally^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H^H often just don't know what the hell they're doing.
posted by SpecialK at 8:16 PM on September 15, 2004

I'm sure it happened elsewhere, but it definitely happened back in 1999 at agency.com. It spread all over other consulting companies and caused all kinds of fights about who deserved to be making what.

Good times, good times.
posted by malphigian at 11:49 PM on September 15, 2004

i'm a hr person, and i did it once. yes, i am stupid. my company recently merged with another where the policy was for all salary info to be made available to everyone, which was kind of weird.
posted by kev23f at 2:19 AM on September 16, 2004

Gee SpecialK, you said exactly what I wanted to say.
(don't take it personaly kev23f)
posted by Goofyy at 4:30 AM on September 16, 2004

HR people just don't know what the hell they're doing.

There fixed it for you.

Still bitter after all those lost paychecks and overtime payments
posted by fullerine at 5:05 AM on September 16, 2004

Maybe there would some examples on fuckedcompany or internalmemos.com.
posted by milovoo at 7:30 AM on September 16, 2004

happened to a friend. it seems to usually be someone with access who let's someone know, and so on. she had negotiated a good deal in comparison to the others and so it wasn't good for her, but this happens all the time, with office politics and cliques, etc.
posted by ethylene at 9:39 AM on September 16, 2004

The commercial was pretty memorable at the time, but now I can't even place the company or product.
posted by GaelFC at 11:55 AM on September 16, 2004

Happened at a dot.bomb I worked at few years back -- someone found unsecured excel spreadsheet that contained everyone's salaries and dates when they were going to be fired.

That someone then created a new yahoo email account and promptly emailed the spreadsheet to everyone. Witch hunt ensued, but clueless country manager never found out who did it even as most everyone else did ...
posted by zeikka at 12:54 PM on September 16, 2004