Hold my tongue?

Philodox

I made a small innocent mistake (inspite of due dilligence) at work that caused somebody else a great deal of inconvenience. Instead of contacting me directly about it first he emailed me, cc'ed my boss, another of my superiors, and a completely unrelated team of people.

Now, my gut instinct is to tell the guy off but I realise that will probably get me nowhere fast. Now is it appropriate to send him an email asking him to take things up with me directly in future? should I say this to him in person?

Basically I'm pissed that he escalated this when he had no reason to do so.

EggyToast

I would ask your boss what the best course of action is.

powerss

I think we need more info before we offer advice.

However, I'd do what he did (and what FR said) - go to the boss first.

Philodox

What kind of information do you want? It has a lot to do with build and deployment of software so I didn't figure it was incredibly relevant.

EclecticGroove

For what it's worth.

I've worked in similar environments, and essentially it comes down to the guy feeling like something is being pegged on him and him responding with a "HELL FUCKING NO, THIS WASN'T MY GODDAMN FAULT" and ccing you and all relevant people that may have been pinning it on him to make sure he's got a VERY clear pointer away from him and directly to you.

Dick move? Usually, but maybe this guy is sued to getting dumped on and this is his response. I'd just talk with your manager about it quickly and then forget about it.

jotate

HR reps are usually good for this sort of dispute.

EggyToast

I recommended asking your boss because he/she will have a better feel for the situation than you. Often, when employees see something happening that they think is a big deal, the boss/manager will figure "eh, so 'n so does this a lot, not a big deal" or "well, maybe not the most tactful, but now we know so it's cool." They also generally talk to the higher ups and other dept. people, so if there IS something you should do, they will know.

So yeah. Generally, if you don't know what you should do, you defer to your boss. That's their job, after all, to manage their underlings. Better to let them sort out logistical and personnel issues than try to deal with it yourself.

witch_ie

I also think you should talk to your boss about how this should be handled at this point. He's already been brought into the loop as it is and you don't want to further aggravate the situation.

iTunesIsEvil

I work for a small company so the way I get stuff done is a bit different than most...

I would go apologize to the guy for having messed up and caused him extra work and some inconvenience. Once you're done with "my bad, I apologize" ask him *why* he cc'd everyone and their mom and explain to him that if you do mess up again and it causes him trouble to please come to you first. Once you're done with that go talk with your boss; let him know you've apologized and that the issue was your fault and that you asked your co-worker to immediately let you know if you've goofed so you have the opportunity to fix the issue before it needs to be escalated into a team thing.

themightypuck

In the past when I've come up against ass covering sociopaths I just play the game. If I make a mistake and an email returns to with a billion cc"s and god knows how many bcc's I just respond professionally and say I will fix the mistake or If I don't think it was a mistake I say I will "look into it". A lot of this depends on your company's culture and your manager. I had one manager who I loved to death just to shoot the breeze with but when I came to review time she was a robot and kept lists of all the good things and bad things people said to her about me. I had to make clear to my clients to tell her how much they loved me since in the real world only pissed off people bother to complain so I needed to remind my happy clients to balance stuff out.