To feel a bit sick about these emails?

[EthelMermen]

I work in a small team. There are just 3 of us, Team Leader and 2 admin assistants.

The Team Leader is a nice bloke, supportive and understanding but can get a bit stressed or hyper depending on how the job is going. He has your back though, as long as you get your work done.

The other admin has been out sick for over a month. She will be back in January. I have had to chase a few bits of paperwork that had been sent to her email so the IT manager has given me access to her emails so I can trawl through them and make sure any action needed can be sorted.

I’ve read a few personal emails to her friend.

She clearly despises me. She has referred to me as a cow, patronising, condescending and a bitch. She has referred to the team leader as being like a child on a sugar high and irritating as hell.

These were in private emails that shouldn’t really have been on the system, my name was the subject title. She has also been researching and applying for new jobs.

I thought she liked me, clearly not. I thought she liked the Team leader too.

I am a lot older than her and she thinks I treat her as if she is a child. I must give that impression but I thought I treated her like another professional colleague. Her expertise is in a different area to mine and I would always defer to her in that but she occasionally impacts on my section and doesn’t always follow procedures so I have to put it right. It’s this that I think she considers me to be patronising

I will have to reconsider the way I Interact with her. I don’t want to annoy anyone or not have a productive and gentle atmosphere in the office.

I feel upset though. A bit like I’ve been punched in the gut. She was really horrible about me.

How should I handle this?

Nope if it’s a work email then it’s not private. She should be reported.

Also, the subject of the emails was the OP’s name so she can be forgiven for thinking they had something to do with her, can’t she?

Honestly, do people really think it’s at all appropriate to use the work email account for personal reasons ?

Personally I would ask the team manager to review all the personal emails including those about him. What she thinks of her colleagues is highly relevant to how much trust the organisation can place in her.

Well I would have been really passive aggressive by forwarding the emails to my own email address with the “request read receipt” option turned on.
Then I’d have waited for her to be at her desk and opened the emails from my account.
A little notification would have popped up on her screen saying you’d just read them

but then again I’m a cruel bitch and would have loved to see her squirm

EmployERS can monitor emails for specific reasons. The emails were clearly private (fair enough. Opening one might be an accident but you viewed a few by the sounds of it) so it's entirely possible this could turn into a grievance/disciplinary nightmare for all concerned if the colleague wasn't aware a fellow colleague would have access to emails and policies allow for personal emails (quite common now). Potentially you'll have colleague raising a grievance, you raise one for the content, she gets a disciplinary for the content, it person gets one for not checking colleague consented and word gets out you snooped through a colleague's emails.

I think I'd stick to what a pp suggested and drop it in that you were given access but leave it there and now you know her feelings watch your back and keep notes of any shittiness going forwards.

Thanks everyone.

I’m not sure I have the courage to broach this subject with her. I think I’ll just be professional and let her find out indirectly or at all.

I haven’t told the team leader about this. Just told him I’d checked them and actioned what needed to be done.

I don’t want to report her or get her into any trouble. I just feel gutted about it all.

You should never have been given access to her emails.

Remember - people exaggerate and vent in email so she probably doesn’t think nearly so badly of you as she has made out. If you can, put it from your mind.

You should never have been given access to her emails
Why? In every job I’ve ever had we’ve had to access each other’s emails at some point. Over annual leave, if someone’s been off sick and we’ve needed something urgently.
Work emails are not supposed to be private

She has done something wrong- not you, so don't feel sick about it!

I would personally tell the team leader about it because it would effect my ability to work with her - I agree that she is allowed to dislike you: but to use company time and devices to slag you off is unacceptable. You have plausible deniability re snooping because your name was in the title so you could always say you assumed it was related to the project at hand.

Not one person on here could honestly say they wouldn’t look at an email with their name in the header.

I would forward them on to the managers. She shouldn’t be using emails in this way, very unprofessional.

Work emails are never private, every IT policy of every company will say as such. Trouble is no one ever bothers to read it

Your IT dept will always have access to your emails and it’s not unusual for a manager to do as the OPs has done if an employer is off sick (I work in this field). Or other bodies will request access if they think anything illegal is going on.

As for what you do about this, you could have a word with your manager on this and let him deal with it, HR will take a very dim view as another thing in the IT policy will be that work equipment (inc email accounts) should not be used for anything that could be deemed as bullying/nasty/discrimination etc etc, anything that you wouldn’t be happy saying to the individual in person shouldn’t go in an email.

Telling her you had access to her email account should be enough as PP have said.
I wouldn't broach it with her. I wouldn't help or advise her in any way either.
She'll probably leave soon anyway.

www.yourprivacy.co.uk/emailprivacyatwork.html

Tbh this all depends on their policy re email use and monitoring.

I would have a word with your manager, absolutely, and before she returns as well.
"I feel I should bring it to your attention that while going through X's work emails as you requested, I ran across some emails that were really very unpleasant about me personally and a few other members of staff. I am intending to continue working professionally as I always have, but I felt I should bring it to your attention in case X suddenly starts acting differently towards me once she returns and finds out I may have seen them."

This is important because it covers your ass when she returns - if she finds out you've read them or MAY have read them, she may start getting nasty in a "the best defence is attack" way, and if your manager doesn't know why that might be, they may start thinking that YOU have done something to HER that they don't know about. If they haven't been warned then she may start dropping little comments on your conduct or attitude that your manager would have no reason to suspect.

Its also important because humans tend to place much more faith in the FIRST report of a situation they hear - strange but true factoid. If she gets to your manager first, you'll be in for a much harder time dealing with any repercussions.

Work emails are not private, and should not be used for private correspondence.

I would raise it with your team leader.

But for you. No one likes to read that kind of stuff about themselves. If she moaned about you and the team leader, I think the problem is probably her.

Not one person on here could honestly say they wouldn’t look at an email with their name in the header.

I definitely couldn't resist reading them.

No emails are truly private, copies always exist on a server somewhere.

Don't put anything in an email that you wouldn't be happy writing on a post it note and left lying around

OP. You sound lovely.

I like the idea of letting her know that you've sorted xyz work thing via her emails and saying nothing more. (like PPs have suggested - she'll know!)

Personally, I wouldn't report or escalate at all.

And just be as professional with her as you can be. This is HER problem, you shouldn't try and change yourself.

I once found nasty emails about me in a shared folder. It was so hurtful I went to the toilets and cried. I never told the sender I had found, but I knew to be very cautious around her from then on. She must have sensed it because she was overly nice to me.

To be honest the email subject was your name.

You should report her and if they ask why you read it I would just say I wasn't aware it was a personal email as it had my name as subject. Upon reading its apparent she has used her company email in an unprofessional manner.

Would 1000% report her

If your colleague who is absent off sick had any knowledge someone else would read such emails, then I am sure that they would have been deleted. Given that most companies have the ability to read emails remotely, I am sure she could have been contacted beforehand to be advised her emails were going to be read. I think she should be made aware once she comes back that access had been granted, but not by you.

Does not stop you feeling upset and I would be in your shoes.

She's jobhunting and she's been off sick for a month? I'm not sure I'd worry too much about ever seeing her again.

I wouldn't confront her. I'd go straight to HR and tell them she's been sending abusive emails about you outside the firm from her work account. They may well give her the tin tack; she'll deserve it.

Anyone who sends personal emails of any significance from their work account is a numpty. In my place (a law firm) people with management responsibilities have separate accounts for confidential emails, but beyond that it's basically a free-for-all. It's company data and in principle anyone can access them.