Snitch on a work plagiarist?

May 1, 2008 6:51 PM

I work in a small media company, and one of my coworkers came to me to edit a piece of work she had worked on. Long story short, it's completely plagiarized off a (fairly well known) website. Should I report it to her boss?

We're a bit of a jack of all trade's company, mostly internet related development. This woman was hired a couple months ago on a contract basis to do photography and copy-writing. She gets along well enough with everyone, and I bear her no ill will, but we've never worked together on anything.

She came to me today with an article about online gaming that she implied that she had written (a lot of 'I was very tired when I wrote this'). After agreeing to look it over, I started reading it closely, and right there in the first paragraph the actual author had made a reference to their website (we here at...). After doing a quick google, I found the article.

So I wrote her a quick email saying that we couldn't use her article, and linked to the original content. She hasn't replied, and I haven't talked to her since (it was at 5pm).

I could be happy with leaving it at that, providing that she never did it again, but I'm not her boss, I can't make sure that any copy that she provides from now on is original. At the same time, nobody likes a snitch, and if I tell her manager, she'll of course know it was me who said something, which will make for an awkward work environment (keep in mind, small company). Also, she might get fired, and that wouldn't sit well with either of us. So I don't know what to do.

posted by ChefQuix to work & money (34 comments total)

I would just leave it be. She knows you've found her out, and she's probably chewing off her fingernails right now wondering if you're going to tell her boss. It can just be your (yours and her) little secret, and if she has any brains, she'll not repeat that behavior.

However, if she's stupid enough to do it again, then by all means let her boss know.
posted by zardoz at 7:00 PM on May 1 [2 favorites]

She's dishonest and she did something that could have endangered your company. If you'd been less observant, you could've been on the hook for it as well.

You should absolutely "snitch" on her.
posted by hjo3 at 7:02 PM on May 1 [1 favorite]

We're a bit of a jack of all trade's company

And master of none?

Oh get her fired for Pete's sake.
posted by longsleeves at 7:12 PM on May 1

Ah well you know, I'm a web developer, not a grammarnista.

Getting someone fired would weight pretty heavily on me, even if it was someone else's decision.
posted by ChefQuix at 7:15 PM on May 1

Her willingness to plagiarize puts your employer at risk. You need to protect your company first. If she worked for me she'd be fired immediately, because she not only exposed the company to legal risk, she probably violated her contract, which should require her to submit only original work. When I was an employee I was in the same position as you. I snitched in a careful email and attached the work with the plagiarized stuff highlighted (it was 95 percent). The employer gave the plagiarizer a talking to and then she did it again. That was the end of her.
posted by PatoPata at 7:18 PM on May 1 [1 favorite]

To "snitch" is to tell just because you want to get her in trouble. To try to prevent a serious problem for your employer is not snitching.

The fact that she didn't catch the "we here at..." was sloppy (did she not even read it herself?). It seems that she lifted it pretty casually, which I suspect means that it wasn't the first time. Maybe if you're still reluctant to tell, you could check if other pieces of work are original. If you find that it's happened before, then you definitely have to tell.
posted by winston at 7:19 PM on May 1 [1 favorite]

yes, you need to let the higher-ups know what happened. you're not being an immature tattletale here, you're being responsible. tell her boss.
posted by thinkingwoman at 7:25 PM on May 1

Ask her to turn herself in.
posted by Pants! at 7:33 PM on May 1

I would call her tomorrow and ask her if she had reflected on her poor judgment for using plagiarized content and 'thank her lucky stars there are firewalls between herself and your boss.' Then, swiftly say that it might put all of her other work to scrutiny. Tell her this is an opportunity to come clean if she has done this before, and say it cannot happen again or she will lose you as a client and be unable to get a reference. Essentially, you are giving her the opportunity to either step up or walk away.

This is a big problem with many freelancers, worse still with people who are trying to break into PR. I have encountered it too and I feel sorry for the people who have the live with it. But, a lesson's not a lesson unless we learn from it.
posted by parmanparman at 7:37 PM on May 1

I was a project editor for a small company, and caught one of our freelancers passing off stolen words as her own. The subject matter wasn't something I knew a lot about, so I spent some time Googling and researching so that I'd be able to edit her piece. She stole stuff off of pieces that came up on the first page of a Google search, for pete's sake. I wanted her fired just for her insulting attitude, let alone the thievery.

I told my boss, and we agreed it was unacceptable - I had enough on my plate without having to add "make sure writer isn't a plagiarist" to every single project. I wrote the freelancer an email, outlining how I'd found out she plagiarised her whole piece, that we wouldn't need her services anymore, and to never expect a reference letter from us.

My advice: rat her out. Let the bosses decide if she's fired or not. If she's fired, don't feel bad: you just created an opening for a writer with talent and integrity.
posted by rtha at 7:37 PM on May 1 [2 favorites]

As a TA I deal with more plagiarism cases than I'd like (1 is more than I'd like). There might occasionally be cases where I would feel bad if the student failed the paper/class (although I'm having a tough time coming up with a good example).

However, I never feel bad punishing someone who copies and pastes a website and passes it off as her own work.

One might be tempted to not "snitch" if it were a minor infraction (though I think blatantly copying a website is a major one), but what if this is an ongoing pattern? Everyone's going to think "oh it was just a one time thing" because none of them are reporting it. (It's like that askme earlier about the broken windshield - if no one reports it, the cops won't know if there's a pattern.)

High school Grade school kids know they're not supposed to copy a website and turn it in for homework.
posted by chndrcks at 7:41 PM on May 1 [2 favorites]

Honestly, I don't even think ignoring is an option. You have a responsibility to let her boss know what happened, as you currently don't even have a statement from her that she'll never do it again (I might wait 24h to see if she comes up with a convincing excuse/promise). Whether or not she gets fired should be of no concern to you -- it was not your decision to plagiarize and it is not your decision about how to discipline her.

If that plagiarism made it through and your small company had been sued out of existence, how would you feel about losing your job?
posted by Rock Steady at 7:53 PM on May 1

Since you aren't her boss, you should tell your boss, pushing it back up the chain so it can be communicated laterally from your boss to her boss, or higher up to higher up. Your boss might not appreciate you taking things into your own hands by going directly to her boss.
posted by rhizome at 7:57 PM on May 1 [3 favorites]

OK, snitching seems shitty, but consider this: if she does it again, and it comes out that you knew about this, you're toast too. Time to have a quiet word with your own line manager. Ask them what they think you should do. From that point on it's their problem.
posted by unSane at 8:14 PM on May 1

Dob. But as others have said, to your boss, not hers.
posted by turgid dahlia at 8:15 PM on May 1

Wow... snitchy snitchy snitchy.

I do agree with everyone that it's not your job. But, I wouldn't necessarily tell her boss. Some of working in a team environment is knowing that your crew has your back. There are a LOT of reasons why she might have screwed this one up.

There's NO DOUBT she screwed up. But, if it was a 1 time thing, and keep her from making a mistake, she COULD become a loyal team member, and get your back the next time.

Or she could be a screw up. Only you have the information to make that call. If she is, rat her out.
posted by wflanagan at 8:15 PM on May 1

Well, more developments. She has asked another coworker to read over some technical documents as well, turns out that not only are they plagiarized, they're also incredibly dated (like an article about viruses written in 1990). So I guess the two of us will talk to our boss tomorrow and get him to deal with this nonsense.
posted by ChefQuix at 8:19 PM on May 1

Or... you could wait until you hear back from her tomorrow and see what she says before you make any decisions. Whilst it is highly unlikely, she may simply have handed you the wrong draft or something.

Once told, you cannot un-tattle, and really, there is no dire rush here.
posted by DarlingBri at 8:21 PM on May 1

Another perspective:

While contract-managing a project team once many yrs ago, I fired* someone for doing something very similar (stealing a copyrighted work and passing it off as their own work on the firm's behalf as original). I also fired the worker who knew but did not stop the first person or alert management.

So maybe I'm a nasty asshole (well, I am, but I think it's unrelated here.) I believed, and still do, that knowingly putting their employer in such legal risk was an dereliction of duty, whether directly or through inaction.

So... I think I'm warning you, here.

*well, I was a contractor, so I couldn't fire, but I recommended dismissal, and management complied.
posted by rokusan at 9:16 PM on May 1 [1 favorite]

Yeah this..

yes, you need to let the higher-ups know what happened. you're not being an immature tattletale here, you're being responsible. tell her boss.

Your employer trusts you to do the best for the company, she is being far from professional.
posted by mattoxic at 9:36 PM on May 1

The hive mind has spoken.
posted by ChefQuix at 9:43 PM on May 1

She's not just dishonest, she's sloppy too. This isn't your decision to make but don't sit on this; if you keep quiet you acquiece in what she's done. Report what's happened to your line manager and let them make the decision.
posted by dmt at 2:51 AM on May 2

I'm seconding telling your boss. ask him/her for advise on how you should handle the situation and hope they will take over or provide clear direction. this plagiarizing person is putting your employer at risk. if she is pretending to have authored something she didn't, she's misleading the company, which I would consider reason for termination.
posted by krautland at 3:16 AM on May 2

If you feel too badly about "snitching", you can always confront her and let her know that you will be obliged to tell your higher-ups unless she fixes this and doesn't do it anymore, because it will clearly hurt you all if she keeps doing this.

In my "fire them both" example above, that sort of responsible reaction from the second party would have saved their own job, and maybe even earned them a commendation.
posted by rokusan at 5:15 AM on May 2

Sloppy, dishonest, and stupid. Not to mention arrogant and lazy.

Tell your boss. Get the tard shitcanned.
posted by Guy_Inamonkeysuit at 7:18 AM on May 2

ChefQuix: After agreeing to look it over, I started reading it closely, and right there in the first paragraph the actual author had made a reference to their website (we here at...). After doing a quick google, I found the article.

This woman is extraordinarily stupid. She's left incriminating evidence in the first paragraph and then given it to someone else to look over. That sounds either really weird or really stupid.

Either way, it seems like you're overthinking this tenfold. She won't "know it was you" if she does it again even half as blatantly, because her boss will call her in and say, "look, you plagiarized this. This paragraph comes from right here; I found it with an easy google search." This will likely happen whether you tell her boss, whose job it is to make sure this doesn't happen, or not, though it's probably a good idea to give him a heads-up.

It would be easy to pull her manager aside privately and explain what happened: maybe you misunderstood (since she'd only implied that she wrote it) and it's not really the biggest deal yet (since she hadn't submitted the piece and it wasn't published), but this seems a little odd, and he should watch out for it. You are not out of line to tell him that you'd rather he didn't tell her that you've told him this; handling confidentiality in that way is a prerequisite for a manager, and it should not be hard for him to find a pretext. It might be that she submits this piece to him, in which case his job will be simple; it might be that she doesn't, and he instead has to have a probing chat with her about how her writing process is going.

However: my feeling is that you should actually talk with her first, if you can. If she simply avoids you, there's no other option, but if I'm not mistaken this happened a few hours before you posted this yesterday. Give her time to figure it out. When she talks to you, tell her you think she shouldn't really do it again.

But you should speak to her manager privately anyhow, even if you wait.
posted by Viomeda at 7:37 AM on May 2

So a new update - she claims she had copied a research article and not her article into the file, and unfortunately the original is now gone. So it seems she is denying any wrongdoing, despite the other articles. Gah, office politics.
posted by ChefQuix at 7:58 AM on May 2

Based on your update, there is no reason to talk to her anymore, she is a serial plagiarist and is putting your company at risk. You have an obligation to bring this up with her boss and suggest he employ the services of someone not so incredibly stupid, lazy, and dishonest.
posted by BobbyDigital at 8:02 AM on May 2

"she claims she had copied a research article and not her article into the file, and unfortunately the original is now gone"

Isn't that ... convenient.

Nthing Tell Your Manager.
posted by shiny blue object at 8:18 AM on May 2

Manager has been emailed. Awaiting the the incoming shitstorm.
posted by ChefQuix at 8:25 AM on May 2

Please keep us posted as to what happens. I'm very curious as to how it will turn out. I went through a similar situation with a co-worker once (whom I've never met face-to-face because we all telecommunte), only he'd put his name on a piece I'd written and submitted it as his own. I compared his with my original and he hadn't changed so much as a comma. I notified the boss, and his only reaction was to offer me a ghost writing fee (!)
posted by Oriole Adams at 8:53 AM on May 2

Well the boss emailed me back, thanked me for bringing to his attention. Her boss came around some time later for something unrelated, and casually let me know she had read the email. I guess they're just waiting to see if she'll submit something. Otherwise she may stick to the 'oh it was a research article, my mistake' argument.
posted by ChefQuix at 10:02 AM on May 2

Not only is she a plagiarist, liar, and fraud, she is a terribly ineffective one. You've made the right decision.
posted by dirtdirt at 10:49 AM on May 2

Check her previous work (this may not be your position, but lets hope the higher-ups do this). She has most likely done this before, and probably got away with it. Anything that has been used previously, probably can't conveniently go missing.

BTW.. Telling your boss was the right thing to do. Snitching is the act of telling somebody to get them in trouble. What you did, is try to get an issue resolved, which is completely different.
posted by B(oYo)BIES at 12:07 PM on May 2