Legal Question in Employment Law in Illinois

A co worker (not a supervisor) was checking my email while I was out for a couple days. We all check each others mail for customer inquiries since we are in the Customer Service department. While in my email, she decided to snoop around in my sent mail and some archived & deleted mail. She found email that I and another co worker had exchanged that were hurtful towards her. I of course will be apologizing. I am told she was printing these emails. While I am sorry her feelings were hurt, I feel she had no right to do that. No right to snoop in emails between co-workers, no right to print them. Is there anything I can say or do?


Asked on 9/13/10, 4:54 am

1 Answer from Attorneys

The company "policy" apparently creates no expectation of privacy for emails. Based on this apparent situation you would be hard pressed to suggest the co-worker was not allowed to check other emails that may be pertinent to company business. This is like water cooler gossip where the person you're being hurtful toward is standing right behind you and you don't know it. And if there is any content that could be construed as sexual harassment, time for you to get an attorney and check your employee manual, if any..... However, printing out emails that have no business purpose would seem to be something that management should be able to put a stop to if you dare bring it up, because both she and you could wind up in trouble for doing so, plus it's a waste of company resources (paper). If you have an HR department that could mediate this without your being ding'd, that too may be helpful.

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Answered on 9/21/10, 11:31 am


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