friends help: i’m in trouble. - Help.com

oh one more thing!! the email wasn’t written on a county computer nor using a county account. it was written at the person’s home on their personal computer using their personal aol account.

why did you use their account?

Well for a start you tell them you wrote it, you are not much of a friend if you are going to let him take the fall for what you did, how can you even ask what you should do when the only thing to do, the right thing is to own up and take the blame.
I sure hope carma takes a huge kick up your arse if you don’t own up

Speak up. Acknowledge the truth in person. If you wrote something that is true to your heart why would you say it in the dark? I hope you find the strength and courage to do what is right.

To expound on this - I have acknowledged it and in fact will go in to the HR office and meet with the director and likely the elected officials/the administrator/anyone I can. I am not a total scuzz on this - I didn’t use my email account as most of my screen names are fairly identifiable with me - this particular screen name that I used, as well as the friend’s computer, was a dead screen name on an account we mutually use - unfortunately, while the account was always charged to my credit card in recent years, he was the one who got the free aol for a year and so the master name always showed up as him being the owner. Since it was a screen name neither of us ever used, it seemed a natural choice to send the letter. I wanted to make the point that needed to be made without involving personalities - I surely didn’t know/didn’t want the county to play undercover cop and find out who wrote a letter suggesting they revisit a situation. Does it not make your skin crawl that those in significant power would take the time and effort to seek out who wrote something instead of simply dealing with the comments made? again, nothing illegal was asserted; no threats were made; it was simply an email that suggested the elected officials more carefully read things that were public record prior to confirming an appointment. It was not the job of a government staff paid for by tax dollars to look at what citizen had the audacity to question an eminent decision.

BUT - i do appreciate you all weighing in and do definitely agree that if i did this and didn’t own up, i would be an awful person. he is not angry with me/he understands that i sent it without identifying myself so it didn’t become a “who said it”, but what information needed to be out there. My joke was that I was the deep throat on this watergate scandal.

Now the bigger issue is whether a person can feel secure and safe voicing an opinion without fear of retaliation. The county cannot do anything to harm me - but they can harm him. And that shouldn’t be acceptable regardless of whether he wrote the letter or not. I don’t believe they should have tracked the IP. That’s my take on the situation. It wasn’t pertinent to the issue. It would be like tracking down anonymous comments in an employee suggestion box - if you want the truth, make the environment safe to speak the truth. I likely will go completely public on this but am debating what harm i can do to him professionally by making it an issue. Perhaps the best thing is to roll over, pray he can find another job and just get out of there, or I can stand up and say that no one had the right to do that. If i were any citizen in this locality, any business, any employee, I would be **** afraid to ever speak my mind for fear of someone searching out who dared question the king. I’m amazed at it all - so much for openess in government and organizations in general.

1. Never assume you are truly “anonymous”, just like your response to the good people here “pjmarshwiggl”. There are ways to trace people down. This has nothing to do with the “anonymous” response that you did “pjmarshwiggl” through the internet, but it did utilize the internet to trace down a couple of good friends. One I found in Tucson Arizona. I found him of all place in a discussion on a book in a Tucson News paper. Upon further research I found he is an amateur radio operator, I then found an active email address. The other friend lived in the same state as me but about 100 miles north of me and I found him in “anywho”. He had no internet connection that I knew of. So ya see you can always be tracked/traced.

2. Mean what you say and say what you mean. Too many people on help.com do not or if they do they are suppressed.

3. DO NOT USE A SHARED EMAIL OR SCREEN NAME, USE ONE THAT YOU HAVE MADE FOR YOURSELF SUCH AS “PJMASHWIGGL”. THAT WAY THERE WILL BE NO DOUBT IN ANYONES MIND THAT YOU ARE THE AUTHOR!

4. I would get hold IT and tell them it was you not the friend and any further action on their part to implicate your friend will result in a suite against the county.

That is how I would handle this situation, but then who am I?