My god, is there no such thing as 'confidential' anymore?

Working as new district manager in this company I am finding that the company culture is "throw anyone under the bus to save yourself" and that there is a 100% chance that if you discuss a topic with someone, and ask them to keep it confidential, it will be public information within 24 hours.

Even my boss - there is a really ugly HR investigation happening in my district right now, I have not said a word to anyone about it. This morning one of my employees (who is the subject of the investigation) called me because he had received details that even I didn't know about.

How? I asked. He told me that he found out from an employee in a different district, whose boss heard it from their boss. (Huh!?!)

This is the 2nd time I am aware of that my boss has leaked critical information that has come back to bite me. I'm too new to make waves, and she is LOVED by the other DM's because she's nice, and pretty much leaves us alone.

Going to put my head down and just keep driving, but I gotta get the hell out of this place.

There is no escaping it. There's always a group that likes to talk.......too much.

quote:

Originally posted by MNSIG:
There is no escaping it. There's always a group that likes to talk.......too much.

And then there are those of us who listen quietly in the corner, because knowledge is power.

-Rob

quote:

Originally posted by BurtonRW:

quote:

Originally posted by MNSIG:
There is no escaping it. There's always a group that likes to talk.......too much.

And then there are those of us who listen quietly in the corner, because knowledge is power .

-Rob

Yep, my dad told me those same words. It pays to listen, costly to talk.

Humans have 2 ears and 1 mouth, they should be used in the correct ratio.

But for some reason, lots of people like to hear the sound of their voice... even more so when it's "something I heard..."

I guess it's just the culture, no different than those of legal age I saw at the ice cream store posing for pictures eating ice cream to post on facespaceImsofuckingcoolandimportant I need to take the pic 15 times to get it right...

Attention seeking whores, people have become... if they know something, they talk about it...

I trust 1 person in my life to keep a secret. Me.

It's like that everywhere I've worked. Sometimes I'd tell someone something off the wall to see how quickly it would spread and how the story changed by the time it got back to me.

When I was field based, I used to have meeting at HQ every 6 weeks where we would discuss strategy and implementation status. Every meeting would start and end with a discussion about confidentiality.

It was amazing how I could leave the meeting, drive 60 miles to the field office, and hear strategy verbatim from people who didn't attend and didn't need to know. It's one thing to know the strategy for our field office, but they would know the strategy for other field offices too.

It would be interesting if you ran a few experiments with false information. I'd recommend the type that gets you something you want, but suit yourself.

Also, really makes you wonder about people that believe in huge secrets that have been kept for decades doesn't it?

First week at Correction Academy, we were given the advice: "There are no secrets in a Prison".

Aye. If you want to screw with people, confidentially give each person a differing piece of "juicy" gossip. ID each rat in turn. Needless to say, this is not a career enhancing technique, but it's fun as hell.

My favorite is always senior managements "Open Door Policy". Anything an employee says to senior management at my employer is immediately filtered down to lower level management with names, accusations, etc... There are no secrets and privacy does not exist.

quote:

Originally posted by JSB3:
My favorite is always senior managements "Open Door Policy". Anything an employee says to senior management at my employer is immediately filtered down to lower level management with names, accusations, etc... There are no secrets and privacy does not exist.

Recently, at my job, we had a major mgmt turnover.
The "new" upper-manager interviewed each employee about our current manager, with the all glowing "strictly confidential" promise.

Being a older wiser employee, I kept it general, positive and outlined strictly what I would like my direction in career to move in from here, without saying anything negative, about my boss or otherwise.

But, alas, some did not.

And of course, that information was directly fed to our manager, so he knew whom, and what, was said.

And heads will probably roll come review time at the end of the year.

Shame, really, that confidential means nothing today.

I worked for a company full of high-tech snowflakes (decades before "snowflake" was a term used to describe these rectal orifices) that was a non-stop incestuous rumor mill.

It would have been funny if it had not been so aggravating.