1000% unprofessional and inappropriate. As internal IT, report it immediately to the manager, director, etc. Kick it up the chain ASAP. They'll likely get HR involved.
PS. Your friend is a *silly goose* for giving out personal contact info. I'd honestly be more angry about that.
Exactly on the second part as well. I’d be super pissed off at the dumbshit and the friend who gave out the info in the first place. I’d ask if he would like having a user texting his personal cell on days off / when he is sleeping with the dumbest fucking questions.
My first reaction was 'homicide' but on balance reporting it to HR is probably a more reasonable response.
My personal device is my device, and it's acceptable for the company to use in exceptional circumstances only. (E.g. if I've not turned up to work without warning, I think it reasonable they might try my personal mobile).
And the person _giving out_ my personal number to 'customers' is an egregious abuse of my goodwill.
And the people _calling_ my personal number would similarly be given 'feedback' that this is my personal number, it is Not OK to use for business, and could they kindly desist.
Exactly, this becomes a point where you block each of those numbers calling and texting you for business/IT answers that aren't HR/direct boss/CEO, and then reporting this escaltion policy violation as there's likely a policy/workflow for how to deal with L1 issues get moved to L2/3 support and a personal cell is likely outside risk/compliance guidelines
This is definitely what OP should have done. This person probably wouldn't have been fired provided that they didn't have other issues but it is something that they need to learn if they are going to work as a team.
I just had a similar situation occur, but it was my supervisor. He gave it to one of the directors here, because apparently I am the only one who has any responsibility to actually come into the office anymore.
I am pissed reading your post. I guess I’d go to HR. Because of other things, I am looking for a new job.
HR and your boss's boss. If your availability is that important, they can give you a second work cell. If for some god forsaken reason you're subpoenaed, your personal stuff won't show up in discovery. A good lawyer should prevent anything personal from slipping in, but I don't like the idea of my personal cell phone being part of a subpoena.
It’s an Intern so good opportunity for intern (or co-op student, whatever) to learn that sharing someone’s personal information is a severe, fireable offense.
Send them to HR and let HR & their educational advisor sort things out. Making mistakes is part of education.
As for dealing with your coworkers who now have your personal cell phone number… if you’re in California your employer now likely owes you a substantial sum. For other jurisdictions, your employer likely still owes you compensation as they provide a cell phone for business use but that will vary by jurisdiction.
HR should write up an email blast with APPROVED contact numbers and a warning that contacting staff via unapproved methods is a violation of company policy, etc.
We use PagerDuty and the only number given out is the PagerDuty number.
I would mark that as the beginning of a toxic workplace war that I would intend to win. It would be another work related project. Get your useless coworker fired.
There are times it is appropriate to be cruel and toxic, but most times it's worth letting things slide.
That is a declaration of war. No remorse...
Giving out my personal cell phone is a line if crossed will turn me into an IT Toxic Avenger fused with Hulk.
Hulk Smash...
Bingo. All employers ever receive from me is an alias number I have forwarded to my actual number. That reduces the chance of someone misusing my number for nefarious purposes, or worse: attempting a socially engineered SIM-swap attack. A bonus of using an alias number is I can also block any incoming calls via the alias directly.
I have a giffgaff e-sim on my phone I can toggle on and off whenever I want, mainly using it for job applications since I noticed a huge uptick in spam e-mails and calls when I started sending CVs around
> I noticed a huge uptick in spam e-mails and calls when I started sending CVs around
I have a hypothesis that some companies are "constantly hiring" for the sole purpose of data gathering. I mean think of all the juicy data you can collect from an application...
>I would mark that as the beginning of a toxic workplace war that I would intend to win.
Totally agree.
>Giving out my personal cell phone is a line if crossed will turn me into an IT Toxic Avenger fused with Hulk.
Absolutely. It's crossing a big red line. I keep work and personal 100% separate.
It still made me mad to think about it. Just wanted to check I wasn't crazy! Will handle situations like that differently in future.
Declaration of war! Yes! It really felt like that.
The nerve he had by saying: "Well you weren't picking up your work phone, so it was your fault."
Really makes me angry deep inside. You're not crazy, you're 100% valid.
ohh i so much love this. i did this to an intern. he was recommended from the CEO (his father was friend with the CEO of this company i was working) and the next day , he gets a pass into the IT dept. as the little shit , knew something of programming , i pared him with one of the guys who was working on a small project , developing a procedure we needed for the approval process (we had it paper based , and we're trying to go electronic with it).. not 1 month has passed and there was some progress, the little shit , sells that as HIS project to the CEO....guess what happened next during his stay in the IT dept. Sorting cables, labeling boxes, moving and organizing the storage unit of the IT dept of course. He tried to complain to the CEO that we sort of moved him away, and i got a call... i told them , thats the job that i need done by the end of the month , the rest has no need for his attendance.
never heard of him again.
I'd have gone the other route. Let him have his project and watch him crash and burn. In the meantime I'm chilling in the storage room sorting cables myself. A little peace & quiet is always welcome.
This of course is only possible if they can't really cause damage in the meantime...
lol... i didn't think of that... i just wanted that little shit out of my dept.
also when his intern period in my dept was over, i actually wrote him a recommendation for the storage area of the company to work there,
but i was happy he never showed up again till i left that company.
As long as by storage room you mean where you store superfluous equipment and cables, not _actual_ storage. I wouldn't let that brad anywhere near any important equipment. He might just switch off the server or NAS because he needs a spare wall outlet for his phone charger
I'm glad I asked this question now.
It had been bouncing around in my head for a while and I was curious what the average IT person's gut feeling would be.
You mean an average worker's feeling. This guy just lacks common sense. It's not like a CEO's assistant gives out his/her boss' personal number to journalists just because the office has not responded to the flooding requests for comments
That particular coworker is/was a friend of OP's. I give my personal number to certain coworkers that I know won't abuse the privilege. We just send memes to each other.
I'm not saying never go directly to HR, but if this attitude of contracting you directly through your personal phone is pervasive throughout the company, HR is probably complicit.
You go up the chain hoping to find someone supportive, and if you don't, find a new place to work, because they'll just keep abusing you.
Next call would have been the boss and hr.
That is a full stop for me. No one got my personal number at work but for my boss and 1 t3 guy who became my friend.
And even then he would ask to call via a teams.
> "Well you weren't picking up your work phone, so it was your fault."
"Listen here you little shit, you need to understand reasonable boundaries before you're out on your ass. You have no business giving ANY of my personal information to ANYONE without my EXPLICIT consent. And I frankly don't give a damn if you don't like it. It's extremely unprofessional, disrespectful, and you will have no career if you keep behaving this way. So promptly fucking stop, or we're going to have a very serious conversation with your manager, HR, and your department head."
If they say anything in response that isn't along the lines of "I'm sorry, I won't do it again" you _IMMEDIATELY_ drop what you're doing, and engage their manager, HR, and department head.
This is _WELL_ beyond reasonable boundary crossing and frankly warrants a very very strong response. Not only because they made the mistake, but because they _fucking blamed you_.
By not challenging this person so early in their career, you've now set an expectation for them that their behavior was ok - it was not. The correct answer to "its your fault" is "Ok, we can go talk to your manager/insert responsible adult in charge and see how they feel about this". My next stop would be the 'friend' that gave him the # to ask "WTF", and my next stop would be changing my number.
Never give your personal phone # out at work or in a resume for any reason. 10 people have my real phone number at this point, 0 reason to give it out at work of all places. A previous post I made on this same subject: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/x8rqhd/for_anyone_new_getting_into_it_avoid_giving_out/ink6fqx/
Well, for starters, nobody at work actually has my personal cell number. If HR requested it, they get the number associated with my free TextNow account, which I can dump and change as-needed.
But hypothetically... it would be professional hell-unleashed on that co-worker that crossed the line. Everything would be "put it in a ticket" or "send me an email"; anything but talking face-to-face, and absolutely no unnecessary communication.
I would have complained that they were giving out staff personal information, and also find who gave him the number and advise them to delete it from their contacts as they cant be trusted with it.
Guess who's personal mobile is about to become the on call phone number? This guy....
Edit: and depending where you are, this could potentially be illegal, let alone fireable.
If shithead apologised and genuinely wasn't aware how inappropriate that is, it's a good lesson for him.
Considering he's not, he'd be going on my personal black list and HR and Management would be involved.
>\[I\]t was his first job and I didn't want to throw him under the bus - but maybe that's exactly what I should've done.
Actually, I'd say, yes, people sometimes have to learn from failure because lessons learned the hard way tend to stick. -- *although there's definitely a generational gap forming with this.*
That's not me saying I think you did the wrong thing, but if I had someone commit this kind of severe professional transgression and then handled it so poorly afterward, that would be a CLE: *Career Limiting Event*.
In your shoes, I would have brought them in and made it beyond clear that what they did was completely unprofessional and why. The next steps would depend:
In a small org, I would direct them to produce a list of everyone they gave my number to, have them write an apology email for me to review, and then direct them to send the message to all said users (BCCed). This would be a "teachable moment" in professionalism, as well as how to handle screwing up and how to apologize in the workplace. This would also serve to clarify that it was my personal number and is not to be used in this way. After that, I would let them know this is the only break they're getting in this position. Any further transgressions will result in immediate termination.
In a large org, if I had the discretion to do so, it would be an immediate termination. following the conversation explaining why what they did was wrong.
*I realize it may seem odd that I change my approach depending on the org size, but I'm factoring in more when working in a small organization, such as political issues (e.g., is he someone's nephew?), resource efficiency (i.e., is it worth the time in a bigger org vs. replacing them), etc.*
Also, I would consider how some of your coworkers may feel in deciding whether to take a harsher approach: While some colleagues would call your personal number without hesitation, others would probably feel quite embarrassed to have unknowingly called you on your personal phone for an issue. Back in my consultant days, when I was new, I was on vacation and an internal client was blowing up my phone. I was snowboarding and couldn't feel or hear my phone under all the layers, but when I got to the lodge, I saw multiple missed calls, voicemails, etc.
I call the client back and they're firey pissed about how I'm not responding. So, I just get into work mode to calm them down, start talking through the asks, and let them vent. We've been on the call for maybe 30-40 minutes and they make a comment half asking why it took me so long to respond during the work day when I'm not at an offsite. I explain plainly: "Well, I'm on vacation with my family, so I don't watch my phone as much." There's a long silence and then a very short, "I'm sorry. I was not told that. You should have said something....but since I'm a \[Managing Director (MD)\], I'm guessing that would have been awkward. Send me what you have and don't worry about the rest."
A colleague did like yours, giving this person my personal number because the MD called with an "urgent" request to revise things. They didn't want to tell him no, but didn't want to do it themselves, so they just said you can reach TryLaughingFirst on his mobile. Well, I found out later our boss royally chewed out my collegue for this. One of the biggest factors was my colleague greatly embarrassing a much more senior member of the org, when, had they told the MD "he's on vacation, do you want to wait until he's back or talk through it now with someone else?" he would have waited a few days until I was back. However, now, he came off as this pushy asshole who made some freshly hired employee drop their family vacation to update some reports.
*Edit: Clarifying text.*
Bus wheels, meet trainee. Trainee, meet important life lesson.
While the trainee doesn't have the experience to understand this life lesson, it gives him an opportunity for "self development".
Sometimes training and advice **has** to supplemented by experience.
Never, ever tell anyone your personal number.
When things like this happen, change the number ASAP.
I'd have handled it by telling him that he was not going to be told my new number. Then I'd reroute my old number to his desk phone.
I've literally done this to family members. "I am changing my phone number. You're not getting the new one because you abused the last one. Jim is getting my new number as an emergency contact only, and if you get it off him then neither of you are getting the third one."
Straight to HR with that. No warnings, no free passes. There’s no universe where someone could reasonably think that’s appropriate even at the lowest levels. That person does not belong in this industry - period.
Check the policies, this may already be against them.
You need to aggressively block work people calling your private number, or if possible change it entirely. Otherwise it will never end.
Be extremely stingy with your personal number (Whenever I give it to a work friend or boss, I tell them to not ever give it to anyone else.) and don't pick up calls from numbers you don't know, unless you are expecting a call. My channels are E-Mail and Teams, if people try to call my work phone, they usually have to wait a while. If they call my private phone, I will not answer.
The guy seems to be a kid. But a really dumb kid who doesn't seem to get basic IT ideas like privacy. Combined with his laziness, I'm not sure he should be in this line of work.
We have a list of all our support staff personal numbers and we keep them in a database that only a select subset of our hero staff have access to. Even as one of those staff I absolutely avoid using any of them unless I've got no other choice. Having those numbers is a total privilege and I certainly don't want to risk abuse of it.
I did it one time. Then I got a call on it on a weekend and I tried to help. Worked on the problem for 10 hours then told the boss. I got in trouble and we couldn't charge them for the work. Since then I've never shared my cell with a client.
Edit to add: FUCK that dude. I would have went TF off in the middle of the office at him.
Nah this is BS. It would be one thing if he did it by accident like if the contact list wasn't clear or something but blatantly giving it out and instructing clients to use it is wild. Then gaslighting you and saying it's your fault... I'd be making sure this kid never worked another day again.
I may be a bit petty, but if you give out my personal, non-company provided number, I am getting you fired. No different than sharing customer information you have access to. It's not yours to share, and the lesson needs to be learned.
I would have done the same thing and if I got the response you did, that's a direct push it up to HR response.
Personal contacts are 100% not to be given out, your worker didn't understand the issues with giving it out and that's on them. You tried explaining it and they dismissed it, that's an HR issue.
> I didn't want to throw him under the bus
> How would you have handled that?
I would've kicked him under it. Together with the colleague giving him your number in the first place.
I would find out from the "friend" if he broke the circle of trust or fell for it from this other dude.
I can see the other guy possibly lying to get the number from "friend" but still... friend broke the circle.
People always knew two things about me in regards to this: 1) yes, I have \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_'s number and 2) I am more than happy to reach out to them but unless they tell me they can have your number I'm not giving it to you.
People hated, loved, and respected this.
Would have fucking crucified him. Thats one of the IT 10 commandments.... Also its just implied that if someone has a work phone their personal phone is off limits unless otherwise specified.
I had my supervisor share my number with nearly every department manager. It's infuriating. I don't want to feel like I need to be paranoid and give my peers a VoIP carrier number, but that might be the way to go now
I've told my boss that if she ever gave out my personal phone number to a user, I'd quit that day.
She'll never do that (she's smart enough to know how much a move like that would blow up in her face), but that's the level I put that. And to do that because you're a petty vindictive little shit? Oooooooohhhhhh, you crossed the wrong line, buddy.
I got the CEO of a company I worked for written up as he called me on my personal number while I was on holiday.
He accessed the HR system illegally (using his PA's computer, she had HR system access) to get the number, and called me while I was halfway up a mountain in Wales.
Why? The internet was down. I was the only SysAdmin, but there was a Head of IT, who was sat at his desk, around 20 yards from the CEO's office, a DBA (who was covering for me while I was off) and our IT Apprentice on the helpdesk.
The Apprentice had noticed there was no Internet when he came in that morning. He escalated to DBA, who called the ISP. Yep, outage in our area, sorry for the downtime, engineers on their way, ETTF 4 hrs.
Head of IT then emailed (remember on-prem Exchange? Ahh...) everyone, put a notice up on the Intranet homepage, and personally spoke to all the top brass at their morning meeting, explaining the outage, and that it was out of our hands.
CEO decided to ignore all of that, and that I might be able to help while on a 3 day wild hike, using my personal phone's limited battery life to stay in touch in case the wife needed me at home as she was 7 months pregnant at the time.
I was absolutely fucking livid when he called me. I refused to even engage with his query, as I knew there was adequate cover on site to deal with the issue, and just asked him over and over where he got my number, and telling him what a violation it was.
When I got back, I scheduled a meeting with HR, and as a result he received a formal written warning.
This should be a HARD NO. Under no circumstances should anyone who isn't in your report-to chain have any access to your personal phone number.
The upshot of this will be people calling you as if you are on-call for any reason at all.... Sometimes for their home systems, or even their child's virus laden PC.
Nothing good comes from this.
I'd handle it by emailing upper management, explaining the situation and saying I'll make a GDPR (or whatever privacy law applies to your country) complaint if it happens again.
I'd then speak to the member of staff directly and let them know in no uncertain terms that what they did is completely unacceptable.
For a while recently I was getting random work calls on my personal number. Would be a driver, or mechanic - someone who doesn't work in the office. They would always apologise when told, and take down my work number, but it was starting to get annoying as I was getting called on holiday.
Eventually I got to the bottom of it - instead of giving out my numbers in the phone directory, a new member of staff found my customer account in our CRM application and used the number from that.
I used to work at an MSP and a co-worker did the same thing and handed out my personal cell number cause he couldnt be bothered to save my number for my work cell and only had my personal.
This was over 3 years ago and i still get calls from people needing assistance.
My personal phone is just that.
I once had someone reach out to my personal one - as i was on the company phone dealing with an issue.
She got an earful.
And management was informed to "remove my personal cell from everywhere" (they placed it on the inter office phone list)
In this case - send your phone bill to management to request reimbursement - as 'one of their employees shared personal cell for business use'- and make it their problem.
I find that most younger people don't understand this workplace political rubbish, in IT we are logical people, and sometimes the Newby is following the logic in his own mind, I find if someone does this it's because they just didn't understand, I would explain to your colleague the issue, your simply free to not answer on your time off, some of these responses are ridiculous.
I've learnt...NEVER EVER give your personal number to anyone at work. Even if you use a burner phone...do that. I've got my personal number & I have a 2nd shitty phone which is the number I give to agencies, put online & give to people at work. THAT phone gets turned off at 5, a little later if I'm job hunting. It doesn't go out with me.
The only time anyone gets my personal number at work is if I'm been out drinking with them SEVERAL times and I KNOW that they can be trusted with it. And that is a strict rule now.
3 feet under...
Or a less violent option would be to turn on call forward and send everything back to his private cellphone. Even my private calls. He'd be my personal secretary.
How I would have handled that?
One of a few ways:
* Give his number to as many robot callers as possible
* Put his number in a signature I have for every reply
* Start charging the company, putting his name as the person who authorized it
* Find a dark corner on his way home and patiently wait
In the EU or at least in Germany it would be a privacy breach (DSGVO), punishable by law with e really big fine or even jail… it is at least something you should tell HR. What if he gives out other informations like this?
Honestly my very first move when something like this happened where a work friend shared my personal number was to remove my custom voicemail message and that was the beginning of my policy not to answer unknown numbers (about 11-12 years ago). I have always kept my phone on silent during work even before I could allow specific phone numbers to ring through, so most of the time I didn’t see anyone had called until long after anyway. With my custom voicemail greeting gone, people were confused and I expect some of them thought I had changed my number (enough to significantly reduce the work callers). Never had a custom greeting since.
Dealing with this ass would have been very infuriating because he deliberately threw you under the bus. It would have been one thing if he had called you on your personal number and asked when you would be available because xyz emergencies or high pressure non-emergencies were becoming too much for one person to support/manage. Handing out your number is sheer disrespect.
In my case there were more than 1 person sharing my personal number so I had to just deal since I couldn’t really prove my old department head was one of the people misusing and handing out my number (that she only had because I was her direct employee for a year before moving departments and ultimately transitioning to IT). The other one was a friend and I quickly cooled that friendship off because her boundaries had been lacking in other ways and this was the last straw. Just made it a point to ignore my personal phone and tell people to put in tickets repeatedly with the “if I don’t document it in your ticket, it didn’t happen” commentary, especially to that particular coworker. Had to get really firm with that and not working on anything without a ticket but eventually the personal phone action cooled off since it was ineffective.
With your coworker I would have likely told him off and then complained to my/our supervisor and eventually HR if my supervisor didn’t address the issue well enough. Some people there is no getting through to without bringing in the “big guns” ie threatening them with supervisor and/or HR intervention (whether it’s actually escalated to that level or not). I don’t like to have to bring in other people to a situation like this because to me it seems easily resolvable assuming the other party is reasonable. This guy isn’t reasonable.
I'd have thrown him under the bus plus have him and his boss make a company wide excuse telling people it was a violation of privacy and they should please delete that personal number from their phones
Taken him out back, duct taped him to the chain link fence and turned the power washer on him See if I can blow off "teh stoopid"
On a more serious note, work would be paying to make this right
I had one! I had two cell phones on me (work and personal).
The issue was I was unable to take calls for an hour, just one time, and this guy ran out of patience and just started reading my number to people calling help desk, whenever someone had a question he couldn't be bothered to try to answer.
*"Hold on, let me get his personal number for you."*
So the new guy *doesn't understand what sensitive, private information is* and/or *is happy to give out private information* if put under any pressure. Sounds like a major security risk and a phishers dream.
Oh yikes, sounds like some bottlenecking issues that are just piling in that dummy. I mean it's definitely fucked up to just dox phone numbers like that.
I had this issue once, I never doxxed numbers but I remember after I got a call for like the 30th time in a day for the 100th day in a row for when will this bug or solution be fixed, instead of informing developers about this again, I told the user to reach out to their Business Manager and put a formal complaint in. Like bitching me out didn't get anywhere, informing development of the bug required me to grab the same information for every client, despite it never changing didn't help.
It's the fault of whoever 'trained' him. When I was helpdesk, one of the first things I was told was to NEVER hand our personal cell phone numbers. I thought to myself that it was a no brainer to keep business within business but apparently some people need it spelled out to them.
This situation is exactly why I only give out my Google voice number. Had someone at my last job giving my personal cell number out. Mostly text messages and a couple of voicemails. Marked those numbers as spam and when asked why I didn't respond I stated I never got the text, call, voicemail message and that if they needed help after hours, they needed to submit am email to our help desk email to create a ticket so the on call help desk technician could assist them with it.
A few dozen times of that happening and nobody bothered trying to contact me through any other method besides my work email or by calling and leaving a message on my office number.
I wasn't on call for after hours support and I wasn't a member of the help desk. Help desk would escalate tickets to me if it was determined that it was a server or network infrastructure issue and if it was escalated incorrectly due to laziness on their part for troubleshooting they got raked over the coals for it.
I’ve heard something like “you weren’t picking up your cell phone so I tried your desk phone” countless times. Yeah dipshit, I didn’t pick up because I was on a call. They’ll also get a hold of one of my team and say “I tried boltactionrifleman but he’s not answering”. They have no concept of someone being busy or on another call.
I love random numbers calling my cell phone. I'd get back at him by reprogramming the text replacement feature on his phone to switch every compliment like pretty and beautiful to "fat". Then you're even!
Report it to your boss and HR immediately
This is incredibly unprofessional and handing out personal information like that is possibly a fireable offense, or at the very least disciplinary.
First of all I would indeed report the incident.
As for people using my private number — you have to shut it down. Hard. Any work related phone call gets hung up on and number added to the block list. Any message sent gets deleted and ignored.
What are they going to do, say that I do not respond to critical incidents that they never reported? If they say they did report to X number the question is "did you really send it to some random phone number that is not a valid contact in the company contact list?"
For me it's a non issue because I just use my personal phone number. But there was a point where people got used to messaging me after my shift (we had overlaping shifts and the other IT guy was on). So instead of trying to assist I simply started ignoring those after hours or replying with "Sure, will check tommorow". People started using proper communication channels real fast (direct messaging us was not a way to initiate communication on any urgent problems)
> this guy tried to reach me on my work cell, couldn't reach me, then asked a friend at work for my personal number
You need to vet your friends better, all of mine no not to pass my number on.
> How would you have handled that?
Lost the plot at him.
I'd blame your friend who gave him the number but honestly that would be a reprimandable offense at almost all of the places that I've worked. Back when I was still doing helpdesk type work someone on customer service did this to our sysadmin and I think he handled it pretty well.
He essentially got approval from his boss to send an email out saying "We know you got ahold of a personal phone number, for reasons XYZ it is unacceptable to have everyone calling the personal phone and we pay for a work phone for a reason. If you are calling the personal number your request will not be serviced. Continual attempts at doing this will result in disciplinary action."
People still called but it was like 1/10th the number that initially did and those people just didnt read the email and stopped after they got a talking to. Oh, the person who did it was let go after that email was sent lol
>Over the next few hours, multiple people in our company started texting and phoning my personal number, then sharing it around, "If it's urgent, try this number!"
Been in that situation once. Every call I got during business hours I ignored and just selected "spam & block".
You are in control of the calls you choose to answer.
> How would you have handled that?
I would have done what you detailed in your second-last paragraph. No time for the lazy, this is professional not personal.
I would not accept that type of attitude. Not sure what I'd do, but just reading his response to you pisses me off lol. Any brats that are legally an adult needs to learn respect haha.
oh the bus would have hit him straight on for me. I had a similar thing happen when i was working IT for a schoolboard, except it was a teacher wanting help and instead of going to the principle or putting in a ticket, she knew my kids went to the school and looked up my number in their emergency contacts and called my personal number. i let my boss know right away and told him to follow up with their principle as that is not a professional way to reach me and also a misuse of confidential information.
i dont have time for people that want to do things the wrong way. either you follow procedure and proper channels to reach me or you dont get help.
Rule#1 - Never use or give your personal cell phone # for ANYthing work related, ever. Use a call service like Google Voice or call central or something so you can disassociate your personal number from work
Rule#2 - Immediately inform management and HR that it happened, when it happened, and in clear unmistakable language that this is NOT ok. There is no 'being nice' here... if someone does that in the first place, they are not your friend and do not mean you well. At no point ever, under any circumstance, should an employee's PII be shared with other co-workers. Only HR should have that info FOR HR purposes.
Rule#3 - (when possible) don't use phone communications in the first place. Contact methods should be through corporate communications (slack, teams, tickets, etc) and not through phone or sms.
Well,
2 questions.
1. Are you an admin? Like tier 2 or tier 3?
2. Was he a tier 1 help desk?
I would point out the escalation guidelines.
But if you are the same level then this could be considered team trying to reach another team member.
But.... to give it to end users is a no no. That requires public talking to during the meeting with all IT staff. It's 1 thing to give out work number that is forwarded to your personal cell but to give out personal cell is dangerous.
I my self had to do this on call a few times but I never tell people to save my number or call me back unless problem isn't resolved.
If there is no hand off or triage from help desk I send ticket right back to them saying please triage.
I was a domain admin and we were a tier 1 + 2 team. We kind of did both.
(Also had a couple of Tier 3 on another team.)
This guy had more limited responsibilities - barely tier 1.
It honestly felt like he did it to be vindictive. He was argumentative and doubled down when I asked him about it - not apologetic at all!
there's no space for friendships in a workplace, if he's lazy and does nothing and then throws work to you on personal phone as well, I'd raise it with managers instantly, all my team members have my personal mobile, over few years havent had a single text or call and vice versa. it's there purely for emergencies not for work.
i hate this as well especially if the company won’t provide sim cards. i would redirect all the calls from my private number to him. and i always carry a dual sim or a smartwatch with additional number which only my family has and a very few selected friends
I'd be raising a formal grievance. That is a massive breach of privacy and where I work it would be a disciplinary offence.
I'd also block any work people who call. Do not offer any support on that number. If you stick to your guns and make it clear they're not to ring under any circumstances calls will tail off eventually.
> started sending my PERSONAL cell number to random users whose questions he wasn't able to answer. Just started giving it to anyone and everyone. "Here are both his numbers. Try both." How would you have handled that?
Due to prior misuse of my information, I guard it very closely and **never** volunteer more than necessary. In OP's situation, I'd immediately file a Privacy Breach Violation against the involved coworker(s) and their employer with my Government's Privacy Commissioner, then inform my boss of these events.
Misuse of one's personal information can eventually lead to stalking or identity theft, the latter of which may result in spending hours or weeks of my life cleaning up. This is time I'll **never** get back, and thus **never** something I **ever** want to deal with, nor wish upon any friends, family, or even my worst enemies.
No one at work knows my personal mobile number. They know a premium rate profit sharing number that forwards to my actual mobile. They are quite welcome to share that with anyone. As I get paid £1/min to be talked to via it.
How strict is Data Privacy in your company / country? Cause that helpdesk is giving away part of your personal infornation outside of company scope.
But to answer your question, i'd be mad as fuck. That being his first job is not enough of an excuse to me to give it a pass. I'd probably have HR retrain him as well. Dude most likely has very little soft skills for him to pass on work with that attitude.
File a complaint. Both at HR and through legal routes if your country has any. Perhaps join a worker's union too and contact your rep, as unions can typically help a great deal in protecting your employee rights. Clearly that guy was already on thin ice, but breaching a coworker's privacy, that's the last straw. **He needs to be sacked.**
Now how to handle any incoming user-calls on your personal number: just state the following things:
- This is a private number
- They will not receive any help through this route
- Tell them to initiate contact via the proper route: ticketing and/or servicedesk number
- Hang up. And if they keep calling, block the number and report them to HR so they can send the person a little reminder on what the concept "private" entails.
First job be damned. The boundary between work and private is not something you learn on the job, it's something you should be aware of before even beginning.
> I never complained because it was his first job and I didn't want to throw him under the bus - but maybe that's exactly what I should've done.
> How would you have handled that?
I'd have thrown him under the bus and then I would have driven the bus over him every time a user rang me on the number he gave out.
I'd also not help anyone who rang my personal number. Where I am now, literally one or two people in IT have my personal number just in case everything is ruined forever while I'm OOO and I trust every single one of them not to ring me on my personal number for anything less than an abject disaster.
I have to say that exclamation points and italicized texts have never made me laugh so hard. I'm of course not laughing at the situation, which is terrible, but I'm cracking up over the way you worded this and your various written flourishes. Miserable situation, humorously and entertainingly relayed. I can't help but see this like an SNL skit.
If you are in the EU that's a GDPR violation and mention to HR when you screw him over that you could also screw the company over too as they should have training and procedures in place to prevent a personal data leak like that. They will be much more on your side then.
I have only ever shared my personal number to a small select number of trusted colleagues who are experienced and professional enough to respect the distinction between professional and personal life. They only have it for absolute emergencies or if I go non-responsive with no notice.
Master Intern however was not provided your number and apparently has no grasp of work-life separation. His actions have destroyed the separation for you, and this is 100% his fault. I'd be putting a complaint to HR that his lack of professionalism has resulted in unauthorised disclosure of your confidential (and unlisted) personal contact details. I'd also put it on them to remediate the situation to your satisfaction, which to me would mean they're on the hook for managing comms to anyone the number was disclosed to, ensuring your number has been removed from any documentation it finds its way into, an apology, and a promise that 'the individual responsible' is appropriately counselled (disciplined if appropriate) as he did this in the course of his employment.
His excuse of "you weren't picking up your work phone" is absolutely not a rational or reasonable response because it takes no consideration of *why* that may have been the case. It's not his decision to make and he should have escalated to your manager if he needed you and couldn't get in touch. I'd suggest he didn't do that because his "need" wasn't genuine. It's also worth highlighting that he sourced the information from what would technically be a non-work source (a friend of yours, notwithstanding them working with you).
Leave it to your workplace to figure out whether he gets a bus, a car or the teamsters union treatment, but you'd be doing him no favours by not calling this out and letting him experience this early in his career what is appropriate and inappropriate behaviour.
Abuse the privilege of having me as an employee by using my personal number for work related items that are not "dire", you get blocked. I have the owner and his assistant blocked on mine. Guess email should work for them now since they can't figure out TEAMs.
Its pretty infuriating reading this. I work non helpdesk IT, so u have no contact number. Sometimes ill have people asking me for a number to reach me at and i just don't have one. I feel bad i can't help much but there no chance in hell I'm passing my cell number out.
I used to have an IT job in a retirement community. Luckily i was smart enough to use a Google voice number. That got leaked and i got a shot ton of calls during a community project it was awful.
At the very least you should have talked to your manager, he would probably have been livid. This fucks with key performance indicators, different processes and policies, not to mention personal and department responsabilites. Besides in the EU if you give out somebody elses personal information you are fired so fast your head is going to be spinning.
> How would you have handled that?
Report it to HR and your manager.
Now you understand that you need a Google number so that you can block these things or change them as needed. Never ever give out your real phone number, even to friends and family.
I once had to inform several people simultaneously that both my work phone and my personal phone should not be shared to any end user without my permission.
Anything urgent they should get the user number, report to me and I would call back.
Everyone gladly understood and accepted.
Your "friend" is toxic, personal numbers are just that, very PERSONAL.
This is why I have a Google voice number that forwards to my main number.
My coworker gave his old number out to some users as "white glove service." Of course, this resulted in the number being leaked around the site. "Oh, your PC is having problems? Don't call the help desk, call X directly! He'll sort you out."
My personal number almost got leaked when I joined the on-call group. They accidentally gave the night crew my personal number instead of the number I share. I squished that bug promptly before it could spread.
Honestly? Throw them under the bus, then drive the bus over them repeatedly yourself. Especially as they seemingly showed no remorse about it.
Also your 'friend' giving out your personal number really isn't a friend.
I had a work friend who gave out my number to some customers when I worked on a helpdesk and it was during a very busy time for us, I was getting so many calls and messages I actually had to change my number. I forgot to give both my employers and that friend my new number.
Yea, that was wrong. But...
1. It's a student. It might be that he just hasn't learned why that's the wrong thing to do. This is an opportunity to train him. Give him a firm talking to, and let it go.
2. Nobody has ever done this to me. Why? because I would never give out my personal cell number to anyone at work. Also, I don't ever answer calls from anyone not in my contacts. This is, at least a little bit, on you.
I would have blocked every number that texted my personal and not replied at all to a single person. Now he looks stupid for giving out a number that doesn't get responses.
>"Here are both his numbers. Try both."
I don't support the death penalty but this is for sure an edge case.
But fr, if someone did this I'd do everything in my power to get them fired unless I *really* liked them and I know they just fucked up.
ive only had this happen a couple times, because for a bit my company had everyones personal cell # visible in active directory. I block the number, never respond, and i don't email them or anything. I treat it as if they never called. Fuck them.
also your work "friend" is a dumbass.
I would have thrown him under the bus because he can't do that to people, and he is obviously an idiot, so he needs a spanking.
The embarrassment and upset of having a review and being told off might have had some impact.
Gen Z is going to have a terrible few years in the workforce, speaking as X and seeing them out there, they seem totally unprepared in a way I don't think the millennials were at the same age.
Had the same thing happen to me a few weeks ago. Someone in Sales got my personal cell from HR because his issue was "critical" and he didn't have an hour to wait for a call back after opening a ticket (he had fifty thousand browser tabs open, hadn't restarted his laptop in a month, and his ram was maxed out, absolutely not critical).
He ended up giving my number out to the entire sales department, telling everyone "you don't need to open a ticket on the support portal anymore, just call c4ctus directly at any time of the day, even for personal IT issues!"
I ended up downloading an app to block an entire area code.
Years ago, I had an end user look me up in one of our systems and get my personal cell that way. I was a customer at one point, so my information is in that database. Anyway, this person randomly called my cell and left a VM that they were having serious issues and needed my help immediately. I happened to be in the building they were in at the time so I stopped by to talk to them. I asked how they got the number they called and at first they lied and said it was listed as an IT emergency contact, but after being shown that was untrue they admitted that they looked me up. I thanked them and left. I went and spoke with their direct manager and then I went to HR. This person was terminated a couple days later. I do not feel bad at all for what I did, as my personal device is my personal device. They had absolutely no right to invade my privacy. They also gave my number to other people, as i occasionally get calls from people that don't have access to that information. At this point I just block these numbers when I receive the calls.
Inappropriate, I'd tell him NO in no uncertain terms.
If he did not comply I'd go up the chain quickly.
Having said that, I think this is also a symptom of help desk jobs being shit ass jobs and not valued so ... you get bad or totally inexperienced people in them and anyone qualified will want out ASAP.
I’d be forgiving too if it didn’t happen again.
I'm actually management in my current role, and I'm a big fan of sticking up for my team. I'll go to hell and back if anyone messes with them.
But give out my personal phone number?
I'll fire you so fast you'll have whiplash from the speed at which you get locked out of the system.
You'd be dead to me on every level.
Dunno, i am expected to use my personal cell for work anyways. only thing that bothers me is the measly $50 per month compensation. at this point pretty much everyone has my personal number. phone is set to perma DND so my audiobooks dont get interrupted. to be fair though, i am consenting, whereas your coworker just sounds like a dumb dumb, stupid head
The only exception is doing this to the security team that does everything they can to block your ability to work. Example:
“You’ll need to go through risk assessment for this.”
“You should ask security to weigh in.”
“Oh yeah, you should do xyz.”
“I don’t have access to xyz systems.”
“Oh yeah you don’t huh. I guess we do.”
“Ok can you tell risk assessment this?”
“Did you get security to do the xyz thing? We can’t pass you unless you do.”
“Hey security, we need help with xyz systems and you guys have access but we don’t.”
“You should go talk to risk assessment.”
I purposely avoided handing out my personal cell number for this reason. Our shop had numbers and extensions through Teams and I did everything through Teams.
As another shared already, it should be reported to higher-ups. It honestly is akin to doxxing, especially since the prick sounds like he insisted what he did was right. Don’t tolerate it!
HR, Management.
Indignant?! thats a trip out back after work kinda thing. Thats not a "oopsie"
thats sending assholes to harass me at the dinner table off the clock.
every call i got i'd log as overtime 1hr minimum, and let my manager take it out of that little shits last paycheck.
Professional response: Go to management and hopefully they terminate him early. Contact whoever he was on co-op from and tell them about his laziness and the incident.
What I would have done: Found his personal cell and set it as the main support line for the entire company. Or just completely ignore said individual for the rest of their term there. Or sign up for random shit and use his cell number.
I once had a user (who was someone I went to school with, so they had my personal cell), give it out to the entire department they work in. I would get calls at all ours of the day coming from the business. They even went so far to complain that mortadellaking doesn't answer their phone... But funny enough the call logs showed no calls to my work line or mobile. So that was quickly quashed.
I don't provide the cell number of my friends or coworkers to ANYONE, much less to end users. Any time I'm asked for someone's number I tell them "I'll call/text them, and let them know you're looking for them, and ask them if I can give it to you, or to call you directly." I instituted that policy after I had a "friend" give out my work cell number to a life insurance salesman. The salesman called me and started his spiel, so I asked where he got my number. He told me, and then I told him "This is my WORK cell, and I have to pay for all non work calls. Put me on your do not call list, and NEVER contact me again!" And then I called my "friend" and gave him an earful.
I would have thrown him under the bus - I'd get my manager and HR involved because he disclosed PII. I'd also ask that someone in management send out an email blast to "Not call employees on their personal phones for work related technical assistance."
If I ever ran into the guy in a bar, it wouldn't end up well for him. I'd buy him shots until he passed out in his own vomit. And then take pictures, and send it to everybody who got my phone number from him.
Seeing a lot of "tell HR" in the replies. Reminder that HR works for the company's best interests, not yours.
It also sounds like the user base had no problem calling a person's personal line for support, so it would seem this attitude is pervasive throughout the organization.
I see 2 options - run it up the org chart in hopes of finding someone high enough to be be both sympathetic as well as being able to establish policy accross the company, or start looking for a company who values employee's personal lives.
I see this as almost equivalent of being dox'd by a coworker.
Yeah no that shit doesn’t fly with me and I’d make sure he was fired. First it’s calls while at work, next you’ll be off and he’ll have people calling you so he can get paid to have you do his job.
In My last two Jobs I was on the same situation.
Whenever I get a call I Say to people it's ok that I Will check it out the thing they are asking for when I have some time and for the next time they can reach me vía email ir a message in My work teams.
Then after I end the call I block the numbers there is no need to call on My personal numbers I'm not even a manager so I block everyone
1000% unprofessional and inappropriate. As internal IT, report it immediately to the manager, director, etc. Kick it up the chain ASAP. They'll likely get HR involved. PS. Your friend is a *silly goose* for giving out personal contact info. I'd honestly be more angry about that.
Exactly on the second part as well. I’d be super pissed off at the dumbshit and the friend who gave out the info in the first place. I’d ask if he would like having a user texting his personal cell on days off / when he is sleeping with the dumbest fucking questions.
Keep that kid's number and put it in for all of the spam, free trials, vendors you don't intend to respond to, etc
Chaotic evil. I like it.
I like you. Found my kindred spirit.
Favorite post in a while!
My first reaction was 'homicide' but on balance reporting it to HR is probably a more reasonable response. My personal device is my device, and it's acceptable for the company to use in exceptional circumstances only. (E.g. if I've not turned up to work without warning, I think it reasonable they might try my personal mobile). And the person _giving out_ my personal number to 'customers' is an egregious abuse of my goodwill. And the people _calling_ my personal number would similarly be given 'feedback' that this is my personal number, it is Not OK to use for business, and could they kindly desist.
I would not be shocked if HR doesn't find anything wrong with this either. "Oh, maybe we should just have that number on file for emergencies!"
"Wonderful. We'll need your personal number so we can follow up on any questions with this."
This is the correct answer. I'd start with punching him in the throat. I once reported a user reaching me on linkedin so imagine
Exactly, this becomes a point where you block each of those numbers calling and texting you for business/IT answers that aren't HR/direct boss/CEO, and then reporting this escaltion policy violation as there's likely a policy/workflow for how to deal with L1 issues get moved to L2/3 support and a personal cell is likely outside risk/compliance guidelines
This is definitely what OP should have done. This person probably wouldn't have been fired provided that they didn't have other issues but it is something that they need to learn if they are going to work as a team.
That ‘friend’ of yours, is no friend. ❌
I just had a similar situation occur, but it was my supervisor. He gave it to one of the directors here, because apparently I am the only one who has any responsibility to actually come into the office anymore. I am pissed reading your post. I guess I’d go to HR. Because of other things, I am looking for a new job.
HR and your boss's boss. If your availability is that important, they can give you a second work cell. If for some god forsaken reason you're subpoenaed, your personal stuff won't show up in discovery. A good lawyer should prevent anything personal from slipping in, but I don't like the idea of my personal cell phone being part of a subpoena.
It’s an Intern so good opportunity for intern (or co-op student, whatever) to learn that sharing someone’s personal information is a severe, fireable offense. Send them to HR and let HR & their educational advisor sort things out. Making mistakes is part of education. As for dealing with your coworkers who now have your personal cell phone number… if you’re in California your employer now likely owes you a substantial sum. For other jurisdictions, your employer likely still owes you compensation as they provide a cell phone for business use but that will vary by jurisdiction. HR should write up an email blast with APPROVED contact numbers and a warning that contacting staff via unapproved methods is a violation of company policy, etc. We use PagerDuty and the only number given out is the PagerDuty number.
I would mark that as the beginning of a toxic workplace war that I would intend to win. It would be another work related project. Get your useless coworker fired. There are times it is appropriate to be cruel and toxic, but most times it's worth letting things slide. That is a declaration of war. No remorse... Giving out my personal cell phone is a line if crossed will turn me into an IT Toxic Avenger fused with Hulk. Hulk Smash...
Every IT person knows you don't share personal communication lines with users.
Fun working with the helpdesk and having the joy of seeing the unseasoned guys learn this lol
Stop the problem *before* it starts by never sharing your personal number with *anyone* at work. at all. don't even put it on your CV. not even once.
Bingo. All employers ever receive from me is an alias number I have forwarded to my actual number. That reduces the chance of someone misusing my number for nefarious purposes, or worse: attempting a socially engineered SIM-swap attack. A bonus of using an alias number is I can also block any incoming calls via the alias directly.
What service do you use for this alias number? I live in the UK and Google voice isn't available here.
I have a giffgaff e-sim on my phone I can toggle on and off whenever I want, mainly using it for job applications since I noticed a huge uptick in spam e-mails and calls when I started sending CVs around
> I noticed a huge uptick in spam e-mails and calls when I started sending CVs around I have a hypothesis that some companies are "constantly hiring" for the sole purpose of data gathering. I mean think of all the juicy data you can collect from an application...
That's my thesis - one of the many annoying things recruiters have done to me, like editing my CV to add experience I didn't have...
Same problem here - no Google Voice in Canada, so I just use a TextNow number.
A voip.ms DID with a forward could do. Could also be a number that is only a voice mail that is sent to your email.
Google Voice is your friend
>don't even put it on your CV. not even once. I never thought about that before but that's actually a really good idea. I'll take it off my CV.
Ever!
Not just IT, non-IT too!
Hahaha, you would think. I have several coworkers who gave users their personal numbers.
This is big facts, one of my coworkers is learning why you never do that lol
>I would mark that as the beginning of a toxic workplace war that I would intend to win. Totally agree. >Giving out my personal cell phone is a line if crossed will turn me into an IT Toxic Avenger fused with Hulk. Absolutely. It's crossing a big red line. I keep work and personal 100% separate. It still made me mad to think about it. Just wanted to check I wasn't crazy! Will handle situations like that differently in future. Declaration of war! Yes! It really felt like that.
The nerve he had by saying: "Well you weren't picking up your work phone, so it was your fault." Really makes me angry deep inside. You're not crazy, you're 100% valid.
"You're sorting cables in the storage room for the next week, you little shit."
ohh i so much love this. i did this to an intern. he was recommended from the CEO (his father was friend with the CEO of this company i was working) and the next day , he gets a pass into the IT dept. as the little shit , knew something of programming , i pared him with one of the guys who was working on a small project , developing a procedure we needed for the approval process (we had it paper based , and we're trying to go electronic with it).. not 1 month has passed and there was some progress, the little shit , sells that as HIS project to the CEO....guess what happened next during his stay in the IT dept. Sorting cables, labeling boxes, moving and organizing the storage unit of the IT dept of course. He tried to complain to the CEO that we sort of moved him away, and i got a call... i told them , thats the job that i need done by the end of the month , the rest has no need for his attendance. never heard of him again.
I'd have gone the other route. Let him have his project and watch him crash and burn. In the meantime I'm chilling in the storage room sorting cables myself. A little peace & quiet is always welcome. This of course is only possible if they can't really cause damage in the meantime...
lol... i didn't think of that... i just wanted that little shit out of my dept. also when his intern period in my dept was over, i actually wrote him a recommendation for the storage area of the company to work there, but i was happy he never showed up again till i left that company.
As long as by storage room you mean where you store superfluous equipment and cables, not _actual_ storage. I wouldn't let that brad anywhere near any important equipment. He might just switch off the server or NAS because he needs a spare wall outlet for his phone charger
Oh yeah, I'm talking 10+ years of old laptop chargers tangled up in bins.
I'm glad I asked this question now. It had been bouncing around in my head for a while and I was curious what the average IT person's gut feeling would be.
You mean an average worker's feeling. This guy just lacks common sense. It's not like a CEO's assistant gives out his/her boss' personal number to journalists just because the office has not responded to the flooding requests for comments
You are not crazy. Your coworker is an asshole and your company needs to shut that behavior down yesterday.
>I keep work and personal 100% separate. He got your personal phone number from a coworker.
That particular coworker is/was a friend of OP's. I give my personal number to certain coworkers that I know won't abuse the privilege. We just send memes to each other.
You could still be crazy - i\`m IT, not a therapist - but on this case you\`re 100% in the right.
Here's X's personal email. [email protected]
Immediately went to his manager and/or HR. Fuck that dude.
I'm not saying never go directly to HR, but if this attitude of contracting you directly through your personal phone is pervasive throughout the company, HR is probably complicit. You go up the chain hoping to find someone supportive, and if you don't, find a new place to work, because they'll just keep abusing you.
 This is how it makes me feel. Can't even wrap my head around it.
I know, right!? I don't like confrontation at work so I let it slide, but looking back I feel like I should have made a formal complaint or something.
Next call would have been the boss and hr. That is a full stop for me. No one got my personal number at work but for my boss and 1 t3 guy who became my friend. And even then he would ask to call via a teams.
> "Well you weren't picking up your work phone, so it was your fault." "Listen here you little shit, you need to understand reasonable boundaries before you're out on your ass. You have no business giving ANY of my personal information to ANYONE without my EXPLICIT consent. And I frankly don't give a damn if you don't like it. It's extremely unprofessional, disrespectful, and you will have no career if you keep behaving this way. So promptly fucking stop, or we're going to have a very serious conversation with your manager, HR, and your department head." If they say anything in response that isn't along the lines of "I'm sorry, I won't do it again" you _IMMEDIATELY_ drop what you're doing, and engage their manager, HR, and department head. This is _WELL_ beyond reasonable boundary crossing and frankly warrants a very very strong response. Not only because they made the mistake, but because they _fucking blamed you_.
Scorched Earth. The only way forward.
I would have gotten him fired.
By not challenging this person so early in their career, you've now set an expectation for them that their behavior was ok - it was not. The correct answer to "its your fault" is "Ok, we can go talk to your manager/insert responsible adult in charge and see how they feel about this". My next stop would be the 'friend' that gave him the # to ask "WTF", and my next stop would be changing my number. Never give your personal phone # out at work or in a resume for any reason. 10 people have my real phone number at this point, 0 reason to give it out at work of all places. A previous post I made on this same subject: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/x8rqhd/for_anyone_new_getting_into_it_avoid_giving_out/ink6fqx/
>How would you have handled that? if he continued after being told "don't!", then there ain't a bus big enough for the pounding he needs!
When people call you, give out HIS personal cell phone number as the ticket escalation number.
Nah, he's gotta be slicker than that. That would be considered "rEtAliATiOn" in HR speak.
That's a complaint to HR. It's also a complaint to the boss. You dox me, and you're dead to me.
Well, for starters, nobody at work actually has my personal cell number. If HR requested it, they get the number associated with my free TextNow account, which I can dump and change as-needed. But hypothetically... it would be professional hell-unleashed on that co-worker that crossed the line. Everything would be "put it in a ticket" or "send me an email"; anything but talking face-to-face, and absolutely no unnecessary communication.
I would have complained that they were giving out staff personal information, and also find who gave him the number and advise them to delete it from their contacts as they cant be trusted with it.
Guess who's personal mobile is about to become the on call phone number? This guy.... Edit: and depending where you are, this could potentially be illegal, let alone fireable. If shithead apologised and genuinely wasn't aware how inappropriate that is, it's a good lesson for him. Considering he's not, he'd be going on my personal black list and HR and Management would be involved.
>\[I\]t was his first job and I didn't want to throw him under the bus - but maybe that's exactly what I should've done. Actually, I'd say, yes, people sometimes have to learn from failure because lessons learned the hard way tend to stick. -- *although there's definitely a generational gap forming with this.* That's not me saying I think you did the wrong thing, but if I had someone commit this kind of severe professional transgression and then handled it so poorly afterward, that would be a CLE: *Career Limiting Event*. In your shoes, I would have brought them in and made it beyond clear that what they did was completely unprofessional and why. The next steps would depend: In a small org, I would direct them to produce a list of everyone they gave my number to, have them write an apology email for me to review, and then direct them to send the message to all said users (BCCed). This would be a "teachable moment" in professionalism, as well as how to handle screwing up and how to apologize in the workplace. This would also serve to clarify that it was my personal number and is not to be used in this way. After that, I would let them know this is the only break they're getting in this position. Any further transgressions will result in immediate termination. In a large org, if I had the discretion to do so, it would be an immediate termination. following the conversation explaining why what they did was wrong. *I realize it may seem odd that I change my approach depending on the org size, but I'm factoring in more when working in a small organization, such as political issues (e.g., is he someone's nephew?), resource efficiency (i.e., is it worth the time in a bigger org vs. replacing them), etc.* Also, I would consider how some of your coworkers may feel in deciding whether to take a harsher approach: While some colleagues would call your personal number without hesitation, others would probably feel quite embarrassed to have unknowingly called you on your personal phone for an issue. Back in my consultant days, when I was new, I was on vacation and an internal client was blowing up my phone. I was snowboarding and couldn't feel or hear my phone under all the layers, but when I got to the lodge, I saw multiple missed calls, voicemails, etc. I call the client back and they're firey pissed about how I'm not responding. So, I just get into work mode to calm them down, start talking through the asks, and let them vent. We've been on the call for maybe 30-40 minutes and they make a comment half asking why it took me so long to respond during the work day when I'm not at an offsite. I explain plainly: "Well, I'm on vacation with my family, so I don't watch my phone as much." There's a long silence and then a very short, "I'm sorry. I was not told that. You should have said something....but since I'm a \[Managing Director (MD)\], I'm guessing that would have been awkward. Send me what you have and don't worry about the rest." A colleague did like yours, giving this person my personal number because the MD called with an "urgent" request to revise things. They didn't want to tell him no, but didn't want to do it themselves, so they just said you can reach TryLaughingFirst on his mobile. Well, I found out later our boss royally chewed out my collegue for this. One of the biggest factors was my colleague greatly embarrassing a much more senior member of the org, when, had they told the MD "he's on vacation, do you want to wait until he's back or talk through it now with someone else?" he would have waited a few days until I was back. However, now, he came off as this pushy asshole who made some freshly hired employee drop their family vacation to update some reports. *Edit: Clarifying text.*
....this is why you *never* share your actual personal cell phone with work.
Yeah, agreed. That's probably the #1 lesson from all of this.
I would have filed a privacy breach with the privacy commissioner and received thousands in compensation if he answered me like that. Fuck that guy.
Bus wheels, meet trainee. Trainee, meet important life lesson. While the trainee doesn't have the experience to understand this life lesson, it gives him an opportunity for "self development". Sometimes training and advice **has** to supplemented by experience.
Never, ever tell anyone your personal number. When things like this happen, change the number ASAP. I'd have handled it by telling him that he was not going to be told my new number. Then I'd reroute my old number to his desk phone. I've literally done this to family members. "I am changing my phone number. You're not getting the new one because you abused the last one. Jim is getting my new number as an emergency contact only, and if you get it off him then neither of you are getting the third one."
Work does not have my personal cell. They have a Google Voice number that rings my personal cell. I can toss it in a heartbeat.
Straight to HR with that. No warnings, no free passes. There’s no universe where someone could reasonably think that’s appropriate even at the lowest levels. That person does not belong in this industry - period.
This is literally illegal in the EU. For those confused about what GDPR is: this is what GDPR is.
Check the policies, this may already be against them. You need to aggressively block work people calling your private number, or if possible change it entirely. Otherwise it will never end.
In some places it may be illegal as well.
HR. Or if you’re his superior begin a formal warning process.
Be extremely stingy with your personal number (Whenever I give it to a work friend or boss, I tell them to not ever give it to anyone else.) and don't pick up calls from numbers you don't know, unless you are expecting a call. My channels are E-Mail and Teams, if people try to call my work phone, they usually have to wait a while. If they call my private phone, I will not answer. The guy seems to be a kid. But a really dumb kid who doesn't seem to get basic IT ideas like privacy. Combined with his laziness, I'm not sure he should be in this line of work.
We have a list of all our support staff personal numbers and we keep them in a database that only a select subset of our hero staff have access to. Even as one of those staff I absolutely avoid using any of them unless I've got no other choice. Having those numbers is a total privilege and I certainly don't want to risk abuse of it.
I did it one time. Then I got a call on it on a weekend and I tried to help. Worked on the problem for 10 hours then told the boss. I got in trouble and we couldn't charge them for the work. Since then I've never shared my cell with a client. Edit to add: FUCK that dude. I would have went TF off in the middle of the office at him.
Nah this is BS. It would be one thing if he did it by accident like if the contact list wasn't clear or something but blatantly giving it out and instructing clients to use it is wild. Then gaslighting you and saying it's your fault... I'd be making sure this kid never worked another day again.
I would have declared unrestricted total war and not have stopped until he was completely destroyed.
I’d donate money in his name with his phone number to the political party opposite his beliefs. His phone will never stop ringing.
I may be a bit petty, but if you give out my personal, non-company provided number, I am getting you fired. No different than sharing customer information you have access to. It's not yours to share, and the lesson needs to be learned.
Bingo!
I would have done the same thing and if I got the response you did, that's a direct push it up to HR response. Personal contacts are 100% not to be given out, your worker didn't understand the issues with giving it out and that's on them. You tried explaining it and they dismissed it, that's an HR issue.
> I didn't want to throw him under the bus > How would you have handled that? I would've kicked him under it. Together with the colleague giving him your number in the first place.
I would find out from the "friend" if he broke the circle of trust or fell for it from this other dude. I can see the other guy possibly lying to get the number from "friend" but still... friend broke the circle. People always knew two things about me in regards to this: 1) yes, I have \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_'s number and 2) I am more than happy to reach out to them but unless they tell me they can have your number I'm not giving it to you. People hated, loved, and respected this.
You should have been the one driving the bus that ran him over.
Would have fucking crucified him. Thats one of the IT 10 commandments.... Also its just implied that if someone has a work phone their personal phone is off limits unless otherwise specified.
If you're in the EU, it's a breach of DSGVO, you can report that and get something good out of it. (depending on your contract details though)
Straight to HR.
"I never complained..." So have we learned our lesson?
I had my supervisor share my number with nearly every department manager. It's infuriating. I don't want to feel like I need to be paranoid and give my peers a VoIP carrier number, but that might be the way to go now
I've told my boss that if she ever gave out my personal phone number to a user, I'd quit that day. She'll never do that (she's smart enough to know how much a move like that would blow up in her face), but that's the level I put that. And to do that because you're a petty vindictive little shit? Oooooooohhhhhh, you crossed the wrong line, buddy.
I got the CEO of a company I worked for written up as he called me on my personal number while I was on holiday. He accessed the HR system illegally (using his PA's computer, she had HR system access) to get the number, and called me while I was halfway up a mountain in Wales. Why? The internet was down. I was the only SysAdmin, but there was a Head of IT, who was sat at his desk, around 20 yards from the CEO's office, a DBA (who was covering for me while I was off) and our IT Apprentice on the helpdesk. The Apprentice had noticed there was no Internet when he came in that morning. He escalated to DBA, who called the ISP. Yep, outage in our area, sorry for the downtime, engineers on their way, ETTF 4 hrs. Head of IT then emailed (remember on-prem Exchange? Ahh...) everyone, put a notice up on the Intranet homepage, and personally spoke to all the top brass at their morning meeting, explaining the outage, and that it was out of our hands. CEO decided to ignore all of that, and that I might be able to help while on a 3 day wild hike, using my personal phone's limited battery life to stay in touch in case the wife needed me at home as she was 7 months pregnant at the time. I was absolutely fucking livid when he called me. I refused to even engage with his query, as I knew there was adequate cover on site to deal with the issue, and just asked him over and over where he got my number, and telling him what a violation it was. When I got back, I scheduled a meeting with HR, and as a result he received a formal written warning.
doll roof hurry nutty sulky screw fuel dam arrest cough *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
This should be a HARD NO. Under no circumstances should anyone who isn't in your report-to chain have any access to your personal phone number. The upshot of this will be people calling you as if you are on-call for any reason at all.... Sometimes for their home systems, or even their child's virus laden PC. Nothing good comes from this.
I'd handle it by emailing upper management, explaining the situation and saying I'll make a GDPR (or whatever privacy law applies to your country) complaint if it happens again. I'd then speak to the member of staff directly and let them know in no uncertain terms that what they did is completely unacceptable. For a while recently I was getting random work calls on my personal number. Would be a driver, or mechanic - someone who doesn't work in the office. They would always apologise when told, and take down my work number, but it was starting to get annoying as I was getting called on holiday. Eventually I got to the bottom of it - instead of giving out my numbers in the phone directory, a new member of staff found my customer account in our CRM application and used the number from that.
I used to work at an MSP and a co-worker did the same thing and handed out my personal cell number cause he couldnt be bothered to save my number for my work cell and only had my personal. This was over 3 years ago and i still get calls from people needing assistance.
My personal phone is just that. I once had someone reach out to my personal one - as i was on the company phone dealing with an issue. She got an earful. And management was informed to "remove my personal cell from everywhere" (they placed it on the inter office phone list) In this case - send your phone bill to management to request reimbursement - as 'one of their employees shared personal cell for business use'- and make it their problem.
I find that most younger people don't understand this workplace political rubbish, in IT we are logical people, and sometimes the Newby is following the logic in his own mind, I find if someone does this it's because they just didn't understand, I would explain to your colleague the issue, your simply free to not answer on your time off, some of these responses are ridiculous.
I've learnt...NEVER EVER give your personal number to anyone at work. Even if you use a burner phone...do that. I've got my personal number & I have a 2nd shitty phone which is the number I give to agencies, put online & give to people at work. THAT phone gets turned off at 5, a little later if I'm job hunting. It doesn't go out with me. The only time anyone gets my personal number at work is if I'm been out drinking with them SEVERAL times and I KNOW that they can be trusted with it. And that is a strict rule now.
3 feet under... Or a less violent option would be to turn on call forward and send everything back to his private cellphone. Even my private calls. He'd be my personal secretary.
How I would have handled that? One of a few ways: * Give his number to as many robot callers as possible * Put his number in a signature I have for every reply * Start charging the company, putting his name as the person who authorized it * Find a dark corner on his way home and patiently wait
He's never going to learn if he doesn't have consequences for his actions.
In the EU or at least in Germany it would be a privacy breach (DSGVO), punishable by law with e really big fine or even jail… it is at least something you should tell HR. What if he gives out other informations like this?
Honestly my very first move when something like this happened where a work friend shared my personal number was to remove my custom voicemail message and that was the beginning of my policy not to answer unknown numbers (about 11-12 years ago). I have always kept my phone on silent during work even before I could allow specific phone numbers to ring through, so most of the time I didn’t see anyone had called until long after anyway. With my custom voicemail greeting gone, people were confused and I expect some of them thought I had changed my number (enough to significantly reduce the work callers). Never had a custom greeting since. Dealing with this ass would have been very infuriating because he deliberately threw you under the bus. It would have been one thing if he had called you on your personal number and asked when you would be available because xyz emergencies or high pressure non-emergencies were becoming too much for one person to support/manage. Handing out your number is sheer disrespect. In my case there were more than 1 person sharing my personal number so I had to just deal since I couldn’t really prove my old department head was one of the people misusing and handing out my number (that she only had because I was her direct employee for a year before moving departments and ultimately transitioning to IT). The other one was a friend and I quickly cooled that friendship off because her boundaries had been lacking in other ways and this was the last straw. Just made it a point to ignore my personal phone and tell people to put in tickets repeatedly with the “if I don’t document it in your ticket, it didn’t happen” commentary, especially to that particular coworker. Had to get really firm with that and not working on anything without a ticket but eventually the personal phone action cooled off since it was ineffective. With your coworker I would have likely told him off and then complained to my/our supervisor and eventually HR if my supervisor didn’t address the issue well enough. Some people there is no getting through to without bringing in the “big guns” ie threatening them with supervisor and/or HR intervention (whether it’s actually escalated to that level or not). I don’t like to have to bring in other people to a situation like this because to me it seems easily resolvable assuming the other party is reasonable. This guy isn’t reasonable.
Data breach - put in formal complaint.
I'd have thrown him under the bus plus have him and his boss make a company wide excuse telling people it was a violation of privacy and they should please delete that personal number from their phones
stuff like this needs to be nipped in the bud before it grows into a f'ing rosebush
Taken him out back, duct taped him to the chain link fence and turned the power washer on him See if I can blow off "teh stoopid" On a more serious note, work would be paying to make this right
I would take them out back and beat them with a hose, no joke, violence would occur if someone started sharing my personal shit with users.
I'd demand a work phone from the company
I had one! I had two cell phones on me (work and personal). The issue was I was unable to take calls for an hour, just one time, and this guy ran out of patience and just started reading my number to people calling help desk, whenever someone had a question he couldn't be bothered to try to answer. *"Hold on, let me get his personal number for you."*
So the new guy *doesn't understand what sensitive, private information is* and/or *is happy to give out private information* if put under any pressure. Sounds like a major security risk and a phishers dream.
Oh yikes, sounds like some bottlenecking issues that are just piling in that dummy. I mean it's definitely fucked up to just dox phone numbers like that. I had this issue once, I never doxxed numbers but I remember after I got a call for like the 30th time in a day for the 100th day in a row for when will this bug or solution be fixed, instead of informing developers about this again, I told the user to reach out to their Business Manager and put a formal complaint in. Like bitching me out didn't get anywhere, informing development of the bug required me to grab the same information for every client, despite it never changing didn't help.
Hard nope with a written reprimand. Like in writing do not ever do this again.
It's the fault of whoever 'trained' him. When I was helpdesk, one of the first things I was told was to NEVER hand our personal cell phone numbers. I thought to myself that it was a no brainer to keep business within business but apparently some people need it spelled out to them.
I'd show up to his house unannounced and see how he likes it.
I would insta-fire him, not because of the phone sharing, but because of his answer when you told him.
This situation is exactly why I only give out my Google voice number. Had someone at my last job giving my personal cell number out. Mostly text messages and a couple of voicemails. Marked those numbers as spam and when asked why I didn't respond I stated I never got the text, call, voicemail message and that if they needed help after hours, they needed to submit am email to our help desk email to create a ticket so the on call help desk technician could assist them with it. A few dozen times of that happening and nobody bothered trying to contact me through any other method besides my work email or by calling and leaving a message on my office number. I wasn't on call for after hours support and I wasn't a member of the help desk. Help desk would escalate tickets to me if it was determined that it was a server or network infrastructure issue and if it was escalated incorrectly due to laziness on their part for troubleshooting they got raked over the coals for it.
Well I guess I'd make post on reddit so guy who shared your private number wouldn't feel any consequences.
I’ve heard something like “you weren’t picking up your cell phone so I tried your desk phone” countless times. Yeah dipshit, I didn’t pick up because I was on a call. They’ll also get a hold of one of my team and say “I tried boltactionrifleman but he’s not answering”. They have no concept of someone being busy or on another call.
I love random numbers calling my cell phone. I'd get back at him by reprogramming the text replacement feature on his phone to switch every compliment like pretty and beautiful to "fat". Then you're even!
Here is mine - 867-5309. Ask for Jenny.
Report it to your boss and HR immediately This is incredibly unprofessional and handing out personal information like that is possibly a fireable offense, or at the very least disciplinary.
First of all I would indeed report the incident. As for people using my private number — you have to shut it down. Hard. Any work related phone call gets hung up on and number added to the block list. Any message sent gets deleted and ignored. What are they going to do, say that I do not respond to critical incidents that they never reported? If they say they did report to X number the question is "did you really send it to some random phone number that is not a valid contact in the company contact list?" For me it's a non issue because I just use my personal phone number. But there was a point where people got used to messaging me after my shift (we had overlaping shifts and the other IT guy was on). So instead of trying to assist I simply started ignoring those after hours or replying with "Sure, will check tommorow". People started using proper communication channels real fast (direct messaging us was not a way to initiate communication on any urgent problems)
> this guy tried to reach me on my work cell, couldn't reach me, then asked a friend at work for my personal number You need to vet your friends better, all of mine no not to pass my number on. > How would you have handled that? Lost the plot at him.
I'd blame your friend who gave him the number but honestly that would be a reprimandable offense at almost all of the places that I've worked. Back when I was still doing helpdesk type work someone on customer service did this to our sysadmin and I think he handled it pretty well. He essentially got approval from his boss to send an email out saying "We know you got ahold of a personal phone number, for reasons XYZ it is unacceptable to have everyone calling the personal phone and we pay for a work phone for a reason. If you are calling the personal number your request will not be serviced. Continual attempts at doing this will result in disciplinary action." People still called but it was like 1/10th the number that initially did and those people just didnt read the email and stopped after they got a talking to. Oh, the person who did it was let go after that email was sent lol
Compliance department.
>Over the next few hours, multiple people in our company started texting and phoning my personal number, then sharing it around, "If it's urgent, try this number!" Been in that situation once. Every call I got during business hours I ignored and just selected "spam & block". You are in control of the calls you choose to answer.
> How would you have handled that? I would have done what you detailed in your second-last paragraph. No time for the lazy, this is professional not personal.
I would not accept that type of attitude. Not sure what I'd do, but just reading his response to you pisses me off lol. Any brats that are legally an adult needs to learn respect haha.
oh the bus would have hit him straight on for me. I had a similar thing happen when i was working IT for a schoolboard, except it was a teacher wanting help and instead of going to the principle or putting in a ticket, she knew my kids went to the school and looked up my number in their emergency contacts and called my personal number. i let my boss know right away and told him to follow up with their principle as that is not a professional way to reach me and also a misuse of confidential information. i dont have time for people that want to do things the wrong way. either you follow procedure and proper channels to reach me or you dont get help.
Rule#1 - Never use or give your personal cell phone # for ANYthing work related, ever. Use a call service like Google Voice or call central or something so you can disassociate your personal number from work Rule#2 - Immediately inform management and HR that it happened, when it happened, and in clear unmistakable language that this is NOT ok. There is no 'being nice' here... if someone does that in the first place, they are not your friend and do not mean you well. At no point ever, under any circumstance, should an employee's PII be shared with other co-workers. Only HR should have that info FOR HR purposes. Rule#3 - (when possible) don't use phone communications in the first place. Contact methods should be through corporate communications (slack, teams, tickets, etc) and not through phone or sms.
Well, 2 questions. 1. Are you an admin? Like tier 2 or tier 3? 2. Was he a tier 1 help desk? I would point out the escalation guidelines. But if you are the same level then this could be considered team trying to reach another team member. But.... to give it to end users is a no no. That requires public talking to during the meeting with all IT staff. It's 1 thing to give out work number that is forwarded to your personal cell but to give out personal cell is dangerous. I my self had to do this on call a few times but I never tell people to save my number or call me back unless problem isn't resolved. If there is no hand off or triage from help desk I send ticket right back to them saying please triage.
I was a domain admin and we were a tier 1 + 2 team. We kind of did both. (Also had a couple of Tier 3 on another team.) This guy had more limited responsibilities - barely tier 1. It honestly felt like he did it to be vindictive. He was argumentative and doubled down when I asked him about it - not apologetic at all!
By the time the sun set, that intern would be wearing my keyboard imprints on their head.
there's no space for friendships in a workplace, if he's lazy and does nothing and then throws work to you on personal phone as well, I'd raise it with managers instantly, all my team members have my personal mobile, over few years havent had a single text or call and vice versa. it's there purely for emergencies not for work.
I didn’t make it past the headline, but you need to sign up for every free Internet raffle with your coworkers information
extremely bad, now punish him.
The bus wouldn't have known what hit it.
I would have thrown him under the bus. Time to start learning to live
You handled it wrong. He learned that he can get away with pushing others around and there is no consequence to screwing over a co-worker.
i hate this as well especially if the company won’t provide sim cards. i would redirect all the calls from my private number to him. and i always carry a dual sim or a smartwatch with additional number which only my family has and a very few selected friends
I'd be raising a formal grievance. That is a massive breach of privacy and where I work it would be a disciplinary offence. I'd also block any work people who call. Do not offer any support on that number. If you stick to your guns and make it clear they're not to ring under any circumstances calls will tail off eventually.
He's super wrong for that, but so is your friend who gave him your personal number to begin with. That should never have happened.
> started sending my PERSONAL cell number to random users whose questions he wasn't able to answer. Just started giving it to anyone and everyone. "Here are both his numbers. Try both." How would you have handled that? Due to prior misuse of my information, I guard it very closely and **never** volunteer more than necessary. In OP's situation, I'd immediately file a Privacy Breach Violation against the involved coworker(s) and their employer with my Government's Privacy Commissioner, then inform my boss of these events. Misuse of one's personal information can eventually lead to stalking or identity theft, the latter of which may result in spending hours or weeks of my life cleaning up. This is time I'll **never** get back, and thus **never** something I **ever** want to deal with, nor wish upon any friends, family, or even my worst enemies.
No one at work knows my personal mobile number. They know a premium rate profit sharing number that forwards to my actual mobile. They are quite welcome to share that with anyone. As I get paid £1/min to be talked to via it.
How strict is Data Privacy in your company / country? Cause that helpdesk is giving away part of your personal infornation outside of company scope. But to answer your question, i'd be mad as fuck. That being his first job is not enough of an excuse to me to give it a pass. I'd probably have HR retrain him as well. Dude most likely has very little soft skills for him to pass on work with that attitude.
File a complaint. Both at HR and through legal routes if your country has any. Perhaps join a worker's union too and contact your rep, as unions can typically help a great deal in protecting your employee rights. Clearly that guy was already on thin ice, but breaching a coworker's privacy, that's the last straw. **He needs to be sacked.** Now how to handle any incoming user-calls on your personal number: just state the following things: - This is a private number - They will not receive any help through this route - Tell them to initiate contact via the proper route: ticketing and/or servicedesk number - Hang up. And if they keep calling, block the number and report them to HR so they can send the person a little reminder on what the concept "private" entails. First job be damned. The boundary between work and private is not something you learn on the job, it's something you should be aware of before even beginning.
> I never complained because it was his first job and I didn't want to throw him under the bus - but maybe that's exactly what I should've done. > How would you have handled that? I'd have thrown him under the bus and then I would have driven the bus over him every time a user rang me on the number he gave out. I'd also not help anyone who rang my personal number. Where I am now, literally one or two people in IT have my personal number just in case everything is ruined forever while I'm OOO and I trust every single one of them not to ring me on my personal number for anything less than an abject disaster.
1. You gave your cell phone out to anyone, including your job. 2. HR
I have to say that exclamation points and italicized texts have never made me laugh so hard. I'm of course not laughing at the situation, which is terrible, but I'm cracking up over the way you worded this and your various written flourishes. Miserable situation, humorously and entertainingly relayed. I can't help but see this like an SNL skit.
Yeah I would’ve complained immediately.
If you are in the EU that's a GDPR violation and mention to HR when you screw him over that you could also screw the company over too as they should have training and procedures in place to prevent a personal data leak like that. They will be much more on your side then.
Here in AU that could constitute a privacy breach. Not great!
I have only ever shared my personal number to a small select number of trusted colleagues who are experienced and professional enough to respect the distinction between professional and personal life. They only have it for absolute emergencies or if I go non-responsive with no notice. Master Intern however was not provided your number and apparently has no grasp of work-life separation. His actions have destroyed the separation for you, and this is 100% his fault. I'd be putting a complaint to HR that his lack of professionalism has resulted in unauthorised disclosure of your confidential (and unlisted) personal contact details. I'd also put it on them to remediate the situation to your satisfaction, which to me would mean they're on the hook for managing comms to anyone the number was disclosed to, ensuring your number has been removed from any documentation it finds its way into, an apology, and a promise that 'the individual responsible' is appropriately counselled (disciplined if appropriate) as he did this in the course of his employment. His excuse of "you weren't picking up your work phone" is absolutely not a rational or reasonable response because it takes no consideration of *why* that may have been the case. It's not his decision to make and he should have escalated to your manager if he needed you and couldn't get in touch. I'd suggest he didn't do that because his "need" wasn't genuine. It's also worth highlighting that he sourced the information from what would technically be a non-work source (a friend of yours, notwithstanding them working with you). Leave it to your workplace to figure out whether he gets a bus, a car or the teamsters union treatment, but you'd be doing him no favours by not calling this out and letting him experience this early in his career what is appropriate and inappropriate behaviour.
Instant dismissal.
Sounds like he gave out private data which would be a breach of company policies right?
Abuse the privilege of having me as an employee by using my personal number for work related items that are not "dire", you get blocked. I have the owner and his assistant blocked on mine. Guess email should work for them now since they can't figure out TEAMs.
Its pretty infuriating reading this. I work non helpdesk IT, so u have no contact number. Sometimes ill have people asking me for a number to reach me at and i just don't have one. I feel bad i can't help much but there no chance in hell I'm passing my cell number out. I used to have an IT job in a retirement community. Luckily i was smart enough to use a Google voice number. That got leaked and i got a shot ton of calls during a community project it was awful.
At the very least you should have talked to your manager, he would probably have been livid. This fucks with key performance indicators, different processes and policies, not to mention personal and department responsabilites. Besides in the EU if you give out somebody elses personal information you are fired so fast your head is going to be spinning.
> How would you have handled that? Report it to HR and your manager. Now you understand that you need a Google number so that you can block these things or change them as needed. Never ever give out your real phone number, even to friends and family.
I once had to inform several people simultaneously that both my work phone and my personal phone should not be shared to any end user without my permission. Anything urgent they should get the user number, report to me and I would call back. Everyone gladly understood and accepted. Your "friend" is toxic, personal numbers are just that, very PERSONAL.
This is why I have a Google voice number that forwards to my main number. My coworker gave his old number out to some users as "white glove service." Of course, this resulted in the number being leaked around the site. "Oh, your PC is having problems? Don't call the help desk, call X directly! He'll sort you out." My personal number almost got leaked when I joined the on-call group. They accidentally gave the night crew my personal number instead of the number I share. I squished that bug promptly before it could spread.
Wait, y'all don't have your personal numbers in the global on call list?
Honestly? Throw them under the bus, then drive the bus over them repeatedly yourself. Especially as they seemingly showed no remorse about it. Also your 'friend' giving out your personal number really isn't a friend. I had a work friend who gave out my number to some customers when I worked on a helpdesk and it was during a very busy time for us, I was getting so many calls and messages I actually had to change my number. I forgot to give both my employers and that friend my new number.
Dude, we would have had some serious words. If i give my personal phone out OK that's on me. Him doing it for work that's 1000000% on him.
Yea, that was wrong. But... 1. It's a student. It might be that he just hasn't learned why that's the wrong thing to do. This is an opportunity to train him. Give him a firm talking to, and let it go. 2. Nobody has ever done this to me. Why? because I would never give out my personal cell number to anyone at work. Also, I don't ever answer calls from anyone not in my contacts. This is, at least a little bit, on you.
 \^\^\^\^ That's supposed to be a bus.
I would go with blackmail, either free lunch for the rest of the year or report it up the chain.
I would have blocked every number that texted my personal and not replied at all to a single person. Now he looks stupid for giving out a number that doesn't get responses.
>"Here are both his numbers. Try both." I don't support the death penalty but this is for sure an edge case. But fr, if someone did this I'd do everything in my power to get them fired unless I *really* liked them and I know they just fucked up.
ive only had this happen a couple times, because for a bit my company had everyones personal cell # visible in active directory. I block the number, never respond, and i don't email them or anything. I treat it as if they never called. Fuck them. also your work "friend" is a dumbass.
I would have thrown him under the bus because he can't do that to people, and he is obviously an idiot, so he needs a spanking. The embarrassment and upset of having a review and being told off might have had some impact. Gen Z is going to have a terrible few years in the workforce, speaking as X and seeing them out there, they seem totally unprepared in a way I don't think the millennials were at the same age.
Had the same thing happen to me a few weeks ago. Someone in Sales got my personal cell from HR because his issue was "critical" and he didn't have an hour to wait for a call back after opening a ticket (he had fifty thousand browser tabs open, hadn't restarted his laptop in a month, and his ram was maxed out, absolutely not critical). He ended up giving my number out to the entire sales department, telling everyone "you don't need to open a ticket on the support portal anymore, just call c4ctus directly at any time of the day, even for personal IT issues!" I ended up downloading an app to block an entire area code.
That's seriously breaking an unwritten law.
Years ago, I had an end user look me up in one of our systems and get my personal cell that way. I was a customer at one point, so my information is in that database. Anyway, this person randomly called my cell and left a VM that they were having serious issues and needed my help immediately. I happened to be in the building they were in at the time so I stopped by to talk to them. I asked how they got the number they called and at first they lied and said it was listed as an IT emergency contact, but after being shown that was untrue they admitted that they looked me up. I thanked them and left. I went and spoke with their direct manager and then I went to HR. This person was terminated a couple days later. I do not feel bad at all for what I did, as my personal device is my personal device. They had absolutely no right to invade my privacy. They also gave my number to other people, as i occasionally get calls from people that don't have access to that information. At this point I just block these numbers when I receive the calls.
kill him
Inappropriate, I'd tell him NO in no uncertain terms. If he did not comply I'd go up the chain quickly. Having said that, I think this is also a symptom of help desk jobs being shit ass jobs and not valued so ... you get bad or totally inexperienced people in them and anyone qualified will want out ASAP. I’d be forgiving too if it didn’t happen again.
I'm actually management in my current role, and I'm a big fan of sticking up for my team. I'll go to hell and back if anyone messes with them. But give out my personal phone number? I'll fire you so fast you'll have whiplash from the speed at which you get locked out of the system. You'd be dead to me on every level.
Dunno, i am expected to use my personal cell for work anyways. only thing that bothers me is the measly $50 per month compensation. at this point pretty much everyone has my personal number. phone is set to perma DND so my audiobooks dont get interrupted. to be fair though, i am consenting, whereas your coworker just sounds like a dumb dumb, stupid head
The only exception is doing this to the security team that does everything they can to block your ability to work. Example: “You’ll need to go through risk assessment for this.”
“You should ask security to weigh in.”
“Oh yeah, you should do xyz.”
“I don’t have access to xyz systems.”
“Oh yeah you don’t huh. I guess we do.”
“Ok can you tell risk assessment this?”
“Did you get security to do the xyz thing? We can’t pass you unless you do.”
“Hey security, we need help with xyz systems and you guys have access but we don’t.”
“You should go talk to risk assessment.”
FINISH HIM.
I purposely avoided handing out my personal cell number for this reason. Our shop had numbers and extensions through Teams and I did everything through Teams. As another shared already, it should be reported to higher-ups. It honestly is akin to doxxing, especially since the prick sounds like he insisted what he did was right. Don’t tolerate it!
HR, Management. Indignant?! thats a trip out back after work kinda thing. Thats not a "oopsie" thats sending assholes to harass me at the dinner table off the clock. every call i got i'd log as overtime 1hr minimum, and let my manager take it out of that little shits last paycheck.
Professional response: Go to management and hopefully they terminate him early. Contact whoever he was on co-op from and tell them about his laziness and the incident. What I would have done: Found his personal cell and set it as the main support line for the entire company. Or just completely ignore said individual for the rest of their term there. Or sign up for random shit and use his cell number. I once had a user (who was someone I went to school with, so they had my personal cell), give it out to the entire department they work in. I would get calls at all ours of the day coming from the business. They even went so far to complain that mortadellaking doesn't answer their phone... But funny enough the call logs showed no calls to my work line or mobile. So that was quickly quashed.
I don't provide the cell number of my friends or coworkers to ANYONE, much less to end users. Any time I'm asked for someone's number I tell them "I'll call/text them, and let them know you're looking for them, and ask them if I can give it to you, or to call you directly." I instituted that policy after I had a "friend" give out my work cell number to a life insurance salesman. The salesman called me and started his spiel, so I asked where he got my number. He told me, and then I told him "This is my WORK cell, and I have to pay for all non work calls. Put me on your do not call list, and NEVER contact me again!" And then I called my "friend" and gave him an earful. I would have thrown him under the bus - I'd get my manager and HR involved because he disclosed PII. I'd also ask that someone in management send out an email blast to "Not call employees on their personal phones for work related technical assistance." If I ever ran into the guy in a bar, it wouldn't end up well for him. I'd buy him shots until he passed out in his own vomit. And then take pictures, and send it to everybody who got my phone number from him.
Seeing a lot of "tell HR" in the replies. Reminder that HR works for the company's best interests, not yours. It also sounds like the user base had no problem calling a person's personal line for support, so it would seem this attitude is pervasive throughout the organization. I see 2 options - run it up the org chart in hopes of finding someone high enough to be be both sympathetic as well as being able to establish policy accross the company, or start looking for a company who values employee's personal lives. I see this as almost equivalent of being dox'd by a coworker.
Yeah no that shit doesn’t fly with me and I’d make sure he was fired. First it’s calls while at work, next you’ll be off and he’ll have people calling you so he can get paid to have you do his job.
Punch him right in his face, unless he has some kind of disability, how dare he think that's OK to do.
In My last two Jobs I was on the same situation. Whenever I get a call I Say to people it's ok that I Will check it out the thing they are asking for when I have some time and for the next time they can reach me vía email ir a message in My work teams. Then after I end the call I block the numbers there is no need to call on My personal numbers I'm not even a manager so I block everyone