To be considering reporting a colleague?

[missmaryp]

I have just recieved an email from a work colleague, from and to a work addres (local authority) and I find it highly offensive. I can't believe in the organisation we work she would send this on. Well I can't believe it's been sent full stop really as I find it racist.

Am I over-reacting to be considering reporting this email?? A big part of me doesn't want to get the lady 'in to trouble', but another part of me is annoyed she would ever think it's ok to forward this.

Here is the email:

YOU SEE MY FRIENDS IT AINT JUST ME WHO IS PISSED RIGHT OFF WITH ALL THESE "CORRECT WAY TO LIVE AND DO AS I SAY NAZIS" TELLING ME WHAT HOW I SHOULD LIVE MY LIFE.

TAKE A READ!

This should be required reading for every man, woman and child in the UK , United States of America, Canada, Australia and New Zealand etc.

"I'm 55+ and I'm Tired"

I'm 65+. Except for brief period in the 50's when I was doing my National Service, I've worked hard since I was 17. Except for some serious health challenges, I put in 50-hour weeks, and didn't call in sick in nearly 40 years. I made a reasonable salary, but I didn't inherit my job or my income, and I worked to get where I am. Given the economy, it looks as though retirement was a bad idea, and I'm tired. Very tired.

I'm tired of being told that I have to "spread the wealth" to people who don't have my work ethic. I'm tired of being told the government will take the money I earned, by force if necessary, and give it to people too lazy to earn it.

I'm tired of being told that Islam is a "Religion of Peace," when every day I can read dozens of stories of Muslim men killing their sisters, wives and daughters for their family "honour"; of Muslims rioting over some slight offence; of Muslims murdering Christian and Jews because they aren't "believers"; of Muslims burning schools for girls; of Muslims stoning teenage rape victims to death for "adultery"; of Muslims mutilating the genitals of little girls; all in the name of Allah, because the Qur'an and Shari'a law tells them to.

I'm tired of being told that out of "tolerance for other cultures" we must let Saudi Arabia and other Arab countries use our oil money to fund mosques and mandrassa Islamic schools to preach hate in Australia, New Zealand, UK, America and Canada, while no one from these countries are allowed to fund a church, synagogue or religious school in Saudi Arabia or any other Arab country to teach love and tolerance.

I'm tired of being told I must lower my living standard to fight global warming, which no one is allowed to debate.

I'm tired of being told that drug addicts have a disease, and I must help support and treat them, and pay for the damage they do. Did a giant germ rush out of a dark alley, grab them, and stuff white powder up their noses or stick a needle in their arm while they tried to fight it off?

I'm tired of hearing wealthy athletes, entertainers and politicians of all parties talking about innocent mistakes, stupid mistakes or youthful mistakes, when we all know they think their only mistake was getting caught. I'm tired of people with a sense of entitlement, rich or poor.

I'm really tired of people who don't take responsibility for their lives and actions. I'm tired of hearing them blame the government, or discrimination or big-whatever for their problems.

Yes, I'm damn tired. But I'm also glad to be 55+... Because, mostly, I'm not going to have to see the world these people are making. I'm just sorry for my granddaughters and their children.

There is no way this will be widely publicised, unless each of us sends it on!

This is your chance to make a difference.

" I'm 55+ and I'm tired.

If you don't forward this you are part of the problem".

"no evidence that the sender of the email wrote the content Cage."

And this matters... why?

You can discuss and indulge in whatever you want in your own home but you do not take them into work.
I don't know which would be worse, if the collegue left all Muslim, or those with addicts in the family, work collegues out of the loop or kept them in.

Well I guess I shouldn't be surprised there are so many backstabbing do-gooders, shit-stirring jobsworths out there - but I can only be disappointed.

Can't people get some perspective here? This is a 'junk' email expressing fairly lame political opinions of no particular consequence to anyone but the most sensitive. As someone rightly pointed out at the beginning, the email is on a par with the Daily Mail - would all of you complain if your colleague brought a copy of that to work?

If I had an employee who thought it a worthwhile use of company time to report this email I would consider that I had made a serious error of judgement in recruiting them in the first place.

People (including the person who sent the original email) need to learn the value of using your judgement and discrimination, and the cost of your employer's time, before bothering managers with pointless trivia like this.

On what logical basis have you made the assumption that I approve of the views expressed in the email Puffin?

In my personal and professional experience local authorities do not conduct themselves in a particularly business-like manner. There is no implied insult in this statement; it is a fact that local authorities have historically been administered on an entirely different basis to that of commercial enterprises.

I have read more LA/CG/CS and other codes of conduct and conditions of employment than I care to remember Birds - the Plain English Society would have their work cut out translating some of them

Offensive and racist? I don't know. I do know that it's pointless whingeing twaddle. What is it actually saying? It's saying that he/she has worked hard all his/her life. Well whoop-de-fucking-whoop, haven't we all? Not sure why working all your life gives you the right to be an intolerant irritable moaner?

I was included in a mailing list that was sent some increasingly sexually offensive images at work. I reported it to my manager (unofficially) to make it stop. Was that malicious and spiteful? As it happens I knew my manager was a reasonable man who would have a quick word and take it no further but even so, would I have been wrong to do so?

Any manager should be making sure that all of his workers feel at ease in the workplace and do not have veiws such as these sent to them, especially as the policies displayed on the walls (in every LA building) are in direct opposite to the views in the email.

You have to accept the ethos of your workplace and if you don't, you keep quiet about it. Every organisation dealing with the general public has a mission statement, you take it on board or you get out.

You can take a DM into work but to leave it open on a page that you may know might upset a collegue (as men used to do in the past when women were "making a fuss" about page 3) and then put it on their desk, would, quite rightly, be enough for the manager to give a warning about.

It matters only insofar as you based your response on your assumption that the sender of the email was also the writer Cage.

Whether you agree or disagree (and that, btw, is nobody's business) I think you should have a long hard think about being a snitch. Never nice and will come back to bite you.

I have to say I'm with downtothesea. I don't agree with most of the email, but it's just expressing an opinion, and not particularly offensive.
"Think for yourselves and let others enjoy the privilege to do so too." Voltaire

It's definitely a chain email, I've seen almost identical ones before. Don't agree with it all, but people are entitled to their political views and I'm not offended by someone having different views to mine.

BUT it's surely inappropriate to be spamming your work colleagues with personal/political screeds and rants, seems like an odd thing to do at work and annoying for the recipients. I'd report for that reason, especially if the sender does this kind of thing a lot, not on the grounds of 'offensive' content. It's nothing to do with policing certain political views, but about professional conduct at work, and using work email for the purpose it's intended!

It's not up to your manager to filter your 'spam' for you - block the sender or put it in your spam folder - move on and don't try to get somebody into a disciplinary situation - it's childish and spiteful.

I'm not sure that the poicies of all LAs would be so much different from all of the views expressed in the email.
Don't know of any LAs advocating genital mutilation.
I believe 'honour killings' are an issue taken seriously by the police and LAs.

You can read what you want into that email. Sure it's going to get up the noses of stereotypical 'guardian reading lefties' - but it's meant to!!!

Are you going to respond it a stereotypical way and call out the thought police?

Sounds like it by the way this thread has gone.

Too many people seem to expect the state to act as Mummy and Daddy and look after them.

Bloody hell, It's a daily mail readers manifesto. I thought only people 75+ had done national service. The sense of entitlement is outrageous but sadly not surprising.

Chumlee-only if you are in primary school. In the adult world, 'whistleblowing' is now encouraged, and if not done and found out, which it could be, if another collegue reports it, the OP will be in trouble, for not bringing it to her managers attention.

A warning for leaving the Daily Mail open on a particular page!!!!

How on earth is anybody supposed to pre-judge what a random passing colleague might find offensive?

Come off it!

You would really warn somebody for that!!!!! F**k me backwards!!!

At this rate I'll be taking out a sub to the Daily Mail - I think they've got it right.

That's not whistleblowing Birds.

Whistleblowing is spilling the beans on serious misconduct by a state organisation or company.

Don't try and make mischief-making/backstabbing look justified and virtuous.

Dammit, no goats available so I may as well comment instead.

Downtothesea bloody good posts. Well said.

The Local Authority should have an IT Acceptable Use policy or similar which governs the use of the organisation's email.

My own organisation does not permit employees to use their work email address for purposes other than work. If they have a web-based email account like hotmail, they can use that for non-work correspondence during work time, but not their work email.

So, just sending a personal email using their work email address is a no no here. The content of this particular email could be in violation of a couple of our policies as well.

Circulating viral and chain emails can cause problems if they aren't blind carbon copied or contain emails of others who've been sent it in the body. These can be harvested for sending spam, phishing, etc., and I doubt most companies would be thrilled to find out their employees are generating this.

Also, including your work email address, possibly including your signature in an email where the content doesn't reflect the firm's mission, aims and values is no different than standing with a placard bearing your company name and logo and a controversial remark/photo. I think alot of job contracts cite bringing the company into disrepute as one of the grounds for disciplinary action.

So, I would say definitely do something - what would depend on the structure in the organisation, so it could be your manager, the IT department or their manager.

From our acceptable use policy

"Users who receive e-mail which they regard as being offensive, potentially illegal or which otherwise appear to contravene the acceptable use policy should report such emails to their manager. Failure to do so could result in disciplinary action being taken"

The acceptable use policy is broadly similar to that posted by evenlessnarkypuffin which includes

Unacceptable behaviour
The following behaviour by an employee is considered unacceptable:

use of company communications systems to set up personal businesses or send chain letters

As an employer I'd be more worried about the sender than the person who reported it. It would seem I'd misjudged them and they were monumentally stupid if they're sending stuff like that at work.

"It matters only insofar as you based your response on your assumption that the sender of the email was also the writer Cage."

Er, no.

I assumed the person choosing to send the email was choosing to agree with its contents and propagate them.

The contents included statements about taking personal responsibility for one's actions.

tyler - that is more or less what ours says too. I thought that was fairly standard these days.

downtothesea- i work for an LA and 'whistleblowing' within the LA includes reporting situations such as this. You can hold what views that you want, you can think what you want, no-one is saying otherwise but you cannot use a work based email to express them.

So the outcome of what, 14 years of free primary and secondary education and more than likely at least 3 years at university is a population of unthinking drones, who would choose to subject another human being to a disciplinary process which may result in dismissal, rather than either delete/spam this everyday political blurby/drivel email or reply saying thanks but no thanks.

Well, ride me sideways, what the f**k is wrong with you lot?

I'll tell you what - it's not why my dad fought a f**king war.
What a bunch of treacherous, smug, self-serving fools.
You're not worthy of what you've been given for nothing.

It's fuck

And you surprise me on the war front. Surely it was the invasion of Pland and the prospect of a code of conduct regarding future office communications? Well, I did get a free education.