Scantlings

I have a new office mate. He's an older fellow, a chatty type from Texas.
I don't know him well, so I'm not very chatty. He keeps asking me personal questions about my life and I refuse to answer his questions because I don't feel they are appropriate at the early stage of our working relationship. He's only been here for a few days.

Today, I glanced over at him and noticed that he had my entire life, and the lives of my family and friends called up on his computer monitor.
Pictures of my daughters, of my wife, he read my wedding announcement in the local newspaper from start to finish.
Now look, I know that my digital footprint is my own fault, but to veer from reading about me, to my family members, especially daughters is inappropriate and creepy as hell.
My online profiles are fairly locked down, but he went at me sideways through the profiles of my friends and families who aren't so careful.

I sarcastically asked him if he learned anything interesting, and he began reading me my life's history back to me. The conversation didn't go well from there.
I informed my supervisor just to let him know.

I don't expect that he'll be disciplined. He didn't do anything illegal or technically against company policy, but he clearly doesn't understand the difference between "ability" and "appropriate".
I know that people sometimes Google each other, but RIGHT IN FRONT of the person? My family too?

I'm asking myself at what point is this stalking and not just looking at information left out on the web.

Likely not the most efficient use of company time, to say the least. And, it begs the question, if this is how he conducts himself while dealing with a co-worker ... will he apply same approach when dealing with other aspects of the organization?

Wow, just wow. I've never worked in an office with more that four people, and everyone I work with now works for me. I'm glad. What a miserable way to start off a relationship with a co-worker.

The only thing I do occasionally is check the history on the web browser on the one computer where my employees sometimes surf the web- they are so computer simple that they have no idea that history is saved. I've never seen anything to worry me, mostly just news items and occasionally one employee considers the concept of online dating. I've never told them about this feature however- I would if I saw something embarrassing to anyone. I wouldn't if someone googled "how to steal from your employer":-)

It sucks, but Google is what it is and we all check people out and assume they're doing the same thing.

What bothers me is that he displayed all of this to you. I see that as an overtly aggressive move and I would react accordingly, making it clear that he's overstepping boundaries. I'd probably also go to necessary words only mode with him for the indefinite future.

A good supervisor will move him. He might actually be hitting on you.

That's what I thought.

He's married, so I doubt he's hitting on me.
He's new, so I've been very economical with my words anyway.
Yes, I agree that it's an intentionally aggressive move, like he's trying to assert his dominance over me somehow.
My boss is going to move him to the far end of the hall in a few days.

As far as I'm concerned, he overstepped by dragging my family into it.

Oh- the job requires a polygraph and he's failed 3 times so far. He's crossing into "if you see something, say something" territory, in my opinion.

Tucky has a right to review the web cookies of his company computer. He has a right to know if his employees are using company resources for illegal reasons.
Nothing creepy there.

If it's a poly position and he has failed it 3 times, what's he doing on the desk?

Sounds like you handled this thing really well Ajax, and I like your strategy to make him HR's problem.

Just be careful, he may have a personality disorder, they tend to be pretty litigious.

Reminds me of the rule of threes, if it happens once it is an accident, twice is coincidence, three times its enemy action.

LarryHoward wrote:If it's a poly position and he has failed it 3 times, what's he doing on the desk?

It's a bit confusing. The position required a polygraph. He failed 3 times, but was slated for another attempt. He sat in an unclassified area and browsed the web for a year.
Sequestration hit, and he was laid off.
Now we're re-hiring and supposedly the position requirements changed to no longer require the polygraph.
My boss informed me today, that they may be re-instituting the polygraph requirement, which he will have to pass. He may be kicked out again.

Even so, this would take months.

Agree - good call taking this to your supervisor/HR. Since he may be a bit "unstable", any feedback he receives from the supervisor will probably be linked back to you quickly.... If you do ever talk with him amicably, maybe drop a joke about Corp Security reviewing the firewall logs for logins to social websites, this should plant a seed of doubt. Considering you work for a global mega-corp, I am 99.9% certain he violated your company's "acceptable use policy".

Failed a poly 3x and still working ? Hmmmmmm...... does his father play golf with the CEO ?

We're actually allowed to use social networking sites. You're just supposed to deduct it from your work hours.
They'd have to fire the entire company.

Yeah, in my former life at a global mega-corp that would have been grounds for a serious talking to by HR.

I'm so glad a well reported on Jamaican Hotelier has the same name as I do. All you see is him for 10 pages.

Jamie wrote:Yeah, in my former life at a global mega-corp that would have been grounds for a serious talking to by HR.

I'm so glad a well reported on Jamaican Hotelier has the same name as I do. All you see is him for 10 pages.

Moderately successful baseball player tops me. I'm good with that. About 10-15 years ago I was in a public position and spoke at conferences, got interviewed, etc. I'm happy that the Internet has buried all that deep in the recesses of 10-15 pages down and many of the hosting sites have deleted the data.

With a name like mine, there is no hiding. As a result, I have known since the '70s that whatever I did would be very very conspicuous.

BeauV wrote:With a name like mine, there is no hiding. As a result, I have known since the '70s that whatever I did would be very very conspicuous.

Yeah, the only other three people named "Kim Bottles" I have found are all female.

Not easy to hide with this name. So I don't bother trying.

LarryHoward wrote:

Jamie wrote:Yeah, in my former life at a global mega-corp that would have been grounds for a serious talking to by HR.

I'm so glad a well reported on Jamaican Hotelier has the same name as I do. All you see is him for 10 pages.

Moderately successful baseball player tops me. I'm good with that. About 10-15 years ago I was in a public position and spoke at conferences, got interviewed, etc. I'm happy that the Internet has buried all that deep in the recesses of 10-15 pages down and many of the hosting sites have deleted to data.

The flip side is if someone comes at you then you know they've really been digging

A requirement of my job is getting publicity. I'm not very good at it, but I'm all over the Internet and with an uncommon name and pictures. Fortunately not much of my private life is there.

This guy of yours has no business in an SCI environment, Ajax.

I've never found any reference to myself on the Interweb and I plan to keep it that way.

Staying off Facebook and such helps a bunch.

Yes, FB is the leading cause of digital footprint but that actually doesn't seem to be my biggest presence. My name shows up in a rash of race results, and old electric car forums that I used to participate in.
I found an old web photo hosting account that was linked to my FB account that was wide open. I haven't used it in years and it had nothing but old motorcycle photos. I locked it down and encrypted it.

The top thing that pops, is our wedding announcement in the local rag. That's where he got most of his information about me.
From there, he started clicking on images of my wife and kids and looking at my one daughter's Twitter account.

Birth, marriage and obituaries have been published in news papers for time eternal, but I was very much against doing so. My in-laws are elderly and it's traditional for them to publish these events and clip the articles and file them in photo albums. They really don't grasp the concept of "classified job" and identity theft or digital footprint. I couldn't stop them.

I've talked to both of my daughters and told them to review their privacy settings. One daughter also holds an SCI clearance and a polygraph so she's mad and freaked out and is diligently reviewing her privacy settings.

This guy sounds creepy as hell. What kind of work does he do? Have you checked him in depth?

Looking up your daughters is stalker country in my book.

Ajax are you sure he wasn't just pointing out to you the dangers of Facebook and other online social networks and just lacks any sort of tact? Seems weird looking up all that right in front of you.

Jer,

He wouldn't have said anything to me if I hadn't confronted him. If he were trying to warn me of something, he would have said "Hey, are you aware that..."
This is not what he was hired to do.

I've talked to my supervisor again, and I'm going to send a report to HR. I don't expect that he'll be dismissed or necessarily even disciplined, but the report will be in his file and if a "higher authority" tells him that this wasn't appropriate behavior in the workplace, maybe he'll believe it. He clearly didn't believe it when I told him.

Since he showed such interest in your children, maybe report his actions to law enforcement.

Bull-

As creepy and inappropriate as his actions are, he didn't do anything illegal and he hasn't repeated the behavior within sight of me. "All" he did, was look at information freely available on the internet.
Law enforcement might take a report, but they aren't going to do anything about it. I have a better chance of getting action through my company and even then I only expect limited results.

He's still in my office but I expect he'll be moved in a day or so. I'll be watching to see if he does it again.

Ajax wrote:Bull-

As creepy and inappropriate as his actions are, he didn't do anything illegal and he hasn't repeated the behavior within sight of me. "All" he did, was look at information freely available on the internet.
Law enforcement might take a report, but they aren't going to do anything about it. I have a better chance of getting action through my company and even then I only expect limited results.

He's still in my office but I expect he'll be moved in a day or so. I'll be watching to see if he does it again.

I hope it works out. Keep us posted, no pun intended.