Don't even think about revenge at work

Eve Tahmincioglu • Profile • E-mail

Marie Lupe Cooley thought her job at a Jacksonville, Fla., architectural firm was in jeopardy after she saw a help-wanted ad in the local newspaper that appeared to be seeking candidates for her position.

She decided that if she was being fired, she’d exact her revenge, and came into the office on a Sunday and erased years of important data on her employer’s computer system.

Cooley’s story received local and national media attention earlier this year, and her act of sabotage is a good lesson for disgruntled workers everywhere. Her impulsive decision landed her in jail.

There are a number of workers out there like Cooley who may feel slighted by their employers. During tough economic times, no one’s job is safe.

But disgruntled employees, take heed: If you deliberately sabotage your employer’s computer system or do something that could undermine a firm’s business, you could end up in jail or ruin your chances of ever being employed again.

Take, for example, the Boeing worker at a suburban Philadelphia plant who in May cut electrical wires on a $24 million Chinook military helicopter because he said he was upset about an impending job transfer. The vandalism caused more than $110,000 in damage, according to federal prosecutors, and the former employee now faces 10 months in prison or more.

As for Cooley, she was ultimately sentenced to five years of probation and agreed to pay restitution to her former employer.

“She felt she was wronged,” says a source close to Cooley’s case. (Cooley could not be reached for comment.)

Another disturbing fact: A survey by security firm Cyber-Ark that found 88 percent of information technology workers would take sensitive data with them or abscond with company passwords if they were fired.

People, this is illegal! This goes way beyond stealing Post-it notes.

Perceived injustice in the workplace
Some corporate security experts point to an uptick in such cases in the last year or so.

“It’s a pretty common problem right now and it’s only getting worse,” says Andrew Serwin, chair of the privacy, security and information management practice for law firm Foley & Lardner.

Serwin, author of "Information Security and Privacy: A Practical Guide to Federal, State and International Law," thinks the reason behind the rise in corporate sabotage is that so much information is stored electronically. “Now you can come in with a thumb-drive or your iPod and download a ton of information,” he says.

“In a lot of these cases of sabotage and aggression at work, it’s a person trying to restore justice to a situation,” says Paul Harvey, assistant professor of management at the University of New Hampshire. Some workers who are fired or not given a raise may feel it’s an injustice that can only be remedied via payback.

And today’s tough economic environment, which can lead to disgruntled workers, doesn’t help. “With the possibility of downsizing, and the number of people fired or laid off, the potential goes up,” he says.

There seems to be a lot of injustice in the workplace these days. Workers are being laid off by the thousands while the top brass at those same firms get big bonuses and raises. Earlier this year, a congressional committee even felt the need to scrutinize the big pay packages given to the CEOs in the mortgage sector, which has seen thousands of jobs slashed.

“People see that and think: ‘They could have paid my measly salary,” says Harvey.

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