Shoot me....

For I am the messenger..

I didn't actually get shot literally, but I sort of felt that way.

Last Friday I noticed one of my colleagues doing something that broke company policy and through a sheer lack of judgement, I decided to tell them directly instead of doing it anonymously via the many channels that my company provides. Now, usually I do it anonymously (yes, I find these instances every now and then..) but with this colleague I had the impression that they would understand it was the wrong thing, appreciate the heads up and proceed to do the right thing.

Unfortunately for me the experience wasn't even close to that. The first few words back included, "You should know me better. I'm sad. Are you going to complain? I don't want to get into trouble." No thanks to an internal messaging system at work, the colleague had the cheek to post comments meant for other people to me, which included, "He wants to know what I'm going to do. Which leader I am gonig to speak to. He still wants to know." When I told them they've posted on the wrong chat, there wasn't a slightest hint of regret or sorry in the reply. "I'm not a technical person. Yeah, it's a mistake." Rude?

It's not the end of it. In my note to this colleague I explained my concerns, where the company policies were broken and that if they did not do anything to report/correct the error, I would. That, somehow turned into me wanting to 'complain'. Sigh. (see why it's never a good idea to tell colleagues directly their errors?) by the end of the day I got an sms to explain that they are taking steps to migitate the problem. It also came with something along the lines of " I wished you'd had told me there and then if you knew I did something wrong so I could correct it immediately. If you knew you were going to complain anyway..."

So there it is, the messenger shot dead. Granted, not exactly the most subtle of messengers but not supposed to be shot nonetheless. Even if I could have told them straight away (which I couldn't, as I wasn't completely sure and by the time I was, the 'situation' was beyond rectification. But does anybody care?) it wasn't my responsibility to help them avoid non-compliance. They needed to help themselves first.

Oh well. Nothing pays as well as doing the right thing. I'll remember to not trust the person whom I have observed to have breached company rules to act lawfully and just raise all my concerns anonymously. It's not so much the fear of retribution I try to avoid, its the fact that the person(s) involved would never (ok, highly unlikely) appreciate being told their wrong, late. oh, somehow it's my fault, and not theirs...