Creepy Uncles’ Abuse of Power in Law Enforcement, Healthcare, & Education: #9to5Nightmares ep 19

We talk about workplace misconduct so you can avoid it!

It’s that time of year. The leaves are falling. The wind is breezing. The apple orchards are blooming. And everywhere, people are bracing themselves for the one thing scarier than deep-frying a turkey: Thanksgiving with that uncle.

Every family has one. The boundary-pusher. The over-sharer. The inappropriate commenter. But in the workplace, these “creepy uncles” aren’t just uncomfortable, they’re dangerous.

In today’s social-media-happy world, it’s worth asking: If your creepy uncle’s behavior was posted online tomorrow, would it concern their employer?

Digital natives blur the lines between what’s “personal” and what’s “professional,” because the internet is forever and much of what people share is public. And every year, stories of misconduct, from threatening Tweets to scandalously viral TikToks, show up online for millions to witness. With Thanksgiving around the corner, today’s episode digs into real examples of people in positions of power crossing lines, abusing trust, and leaving digital evidence behind.

Let’s get into this week’s #9to5Nightmares.

DoorDash driver charged after recording, posting video of nude customer, police say

A DoorDash driver in New York was fired and charged after allegedly filming a naked customer inside his home and posting the footage on social media. DoorDash removed the driver for violating privacy rules. Prosecutors filed felony charges for unlawful surveillance and distribution of illicit recordings. A classic case of misusing access, violating trust, and treating a delivery job like a backstage pass into someone’s personal life. (CNYCentral)

Texas mom screams in pain minutes before delivering baby as hospital allegedly delays care, asks her intake questions

A viral TikTok video shows a Texas nurse delaying care of a patient in active labor, resulting in a traumatic birth and widespread outrage against the hospital. The video, recorded by the patient’s mother, captures the patient doubled over in pain while staff reportedly completed admission paperwork. According to the text overlay, the patient had already waited more than 30 minutes in the waiting room. She delivered her baby 12 minutes after completing hospital paperwork, and there appeared to be stress-related complications from the lack of timely care.

Within days of the video being shared online, more than 23 million people had viewed it. The hospital released a statement confirming it is “reviewing this situation to understand what occurred.”

For organizations, the takeaway is clear: What happens in a triage-wheelchair scenario isn’t just a clinical incident. It becomes a full-blown public scandal with potential legal and reputational consequences. (People) 

IRC Deputy arrested, fired after stalking woman he met on social media

A veteran Indian River County sheriff’s deputy was fired and arrested after allegedly using his badge, agency database, and law enforcement equipment to stalk a woman he met online. Investigators say he illegally accessed protected records, created fake profiles to contact her, repeatedly drove by her home in a patrol vehicle, and sent her 23 sexually explicit photos and videos of himself, many taken while on duty and in uniform.

Officials suspect additional victims. The charges include stalking and offenses against computer users, a powerful reminder of how quickly misconduct and abuses of power can escalate over time. (Vero News)

Fama Findings: Allegations Against University Executive

In a recent screening, Fama found a senior university leader had been accused in social media posts of exchanging academic favors for sexual acts. A video and screenshots circulated publicly, prompting the university to open an investigation. The outcome of the investigation has not yet been shared publicly.

Conclusion

Thanksgiving might bring out the family “creepy uncle.” But in the workplace, this behavior isn’t a punchline, it’s a risk. Every story in today’s episode shows how quickly misconduct becomes public, how easily power can be misused, and how often the first place these incidents appear is online. A DoorDash driver filming a customer. A nurse delaying care as millions watch. A deputy abusing his badge. A university leader facing sexual misconduct allegations already circulating on video.

These aren’t private moments. They’re digital evidence trails, preserved, shared, and amplified publicly online. And when misconduct goes viral, employers aren’t just dealing with a personnel problem; they’re dealing with safety concerns, community trust issues, and reputational fallout that can cost far more than a difficult holiday dinner.

So as we all brace for Thanksgiving conversations with the actual creepy uncles in our lives, remember this: organizations don’t want to discover similar behavior from their people in next month’s Fama reports. The patterns we covered today show why early visibility into online behavioral risks matters; because once misconduct hits social media, the damage is already done.

Want to learn more about how professionals are using online screening to spot misconduct early and protect customers and employees? Explore Fama’s solutions while you listen.

Catch this episode of #9to5Nightmares on your favorite platform, or watch it below.

‍9 to 5 Nightmares – Episode Transcript

Amy Warren: Hi everybody, I'm Amy.

Micole Garatti: And I'm Micole.

Amy Warren: And this is 9 to 5 Nightmares.

Micole Garatti: We talk about misconduct so you can avoid it.

Amy Warren: This week, we're spending a little bit of time focusing on not just what's happened over the last 30 days, but what may happen at your dinner table coming up, and really thinking about, who's that creepy uncle, right? Or that person in your life that's saying things inappropriate at the holidays. Well, guess what?

Amy Warren: People say things inappropriate online all the time, and we find them.

Amy Warren: And they get fired from their jobs. And that's what we talk about. All the crazy things that either we find at FAMA, or we find online, where people are posting things and getting fired for it. And let me tell you, right, Micole, over the last, I don't know, 3 to 6 months, we've seen such a radical increase.

Micole Garatti: Oh.

Amy Warren: People getting fired for what they're posting online. So,

Amy Warren: The volume of people behaving poorly and making bad choices and putting it on the internet?

Amy Warren: Thank you soda!

Micole Garatti: The internet is forever, yes. The internet is forever. And also remember, the lines between personal life and professional life, now that everything is online.

Micole Garatti: Let's just say, you know, if you could be that creepy uncle, and before you open your mouth at Thanksgiving, you should think about, is this something that I'd want the younger people at my table posting that I said on the internet?

Amy Warren: That's a good one! I didn't even think about that. And, thinking about, too.

Amy Warren: People spend more time online than they do offline.

Micole Garatti: Right.

Amy Warren: Now, right? These are just facts. And if you are late to the show, late to the table, late to wherever, this is something that's not gonna get any better. It's just going to increase and get worse.

Micole Garatti: Yes.

Amy Warren: So, let's go through what we have today, because these are some doozies.

Amy Warren: So, the first one that we have… actually, you know what, I'm gonna go out of order. Since we're talking about Thanksgiving, we're talking about food, how many people out there?

Micole Garatti: Oh…

Amy Warren: Are getting DoorDash deliveries, or any of your favorite delivery service. Well, let me tell you, let me tell you.

Micole Garatti: Do not fall asleep naked in your home in front of a window.

Amy Warren: Because you could then be posted online. So, Micole, tell everybody.

Amy Warren: Oh my god, yeah.

Micole Garatti: That behavior, Amy. But yeah, no, last month there was a DoorDash driver who was arrested and fired because they were making a DoorDash delivery, and they found a customer sleeping or unconscious inside their home naked.

Micole Garatti: And they recorded them and posted the video on social media!

Amy Warren: There's so many things. Iust because you have a recording device in your hands all the time on your phone. And one doesn't mean that you can record anything and everything, and post it, anything and everything. You know, people have the right to privacy, people have to consent to be recorded.

Micole Garatti: Yes!

Amy Warren: Right? And it's not…

Micole Garatti: In areas where they believe that they have a right to privacy, which is in their own home!

Amy Warren: There's so many levels of, you shouldn't be doing this, but here's an instance where…

Amy Warren: Common sense is just not there. And the humor, or whatever the thing is in the moment, the viralness, whatever knows what that person was thinking at that time that made this a good choice has now felony charges.

Micole Garatti: And they were fired. They're not allowed to drive for DoorDash anymore, also.

Amy Warren: So, you lost your job.

Micole Garatti: Aye.

Amy Warren: We're being charged with a felony.

Micole Garatti: I…

Amy Warren: So, moving on.

Micole Garatti: As if we couldn't get any crazier from there, somehow it does.

Amy Warren: Oh, yes it does. Alright, now we have a sheriff's deputy who is cyber-stalking a woman that he met on social media, and I will tell you, again, again, the police are showing up, law enforcement is showing up.

Micole Garatti: Every month, every month.

Amy Warren: Every month with the most ridiculous things. Not only are they doing, but they are doing them on duty.

Amy Warren: On duty.

Micole Garatti: In uniform…

Amy Warren: In uniform.

Micole Garatti: In police material, in police vehicles, using police, confidential information. Yeah, speaking of creepy uncles, he met a woman on social media, and was way more into her than she was into him. And he looked her up in police databases, found all of her information, and started stalking her, driving by her house in police vehicles. He sent her dozens of sexually explicit messages and images from inside his police car.

Micole Garatti: On duty. In uniform. And he's been an officer or a deputy for 10 years.

Micole Garatti: He was leading some of the training activities in the department. Now, they don't know if he's done this to other women, and they're thinking that he has. And the department, his boss, is actually asking women to come forward if they've had similar contact with him.

Amy Warren: This… like, there's just so many levels.

Amy Warren: Of wildness that's going on with this coming from an employer's perspective, right? The fact that all of these things happened, you know, at the office, using work equipment, using restricted data.

Micole Garatti: Yeah, confidential information, yeah, government data, you're not allowed to do that.

Amy Warren: And the fact that nobody… there was not enough things in place to let people know that this was happening, it'd be a whole bunch of other conversations to be had here, but, you know, this is just a moment where

Amy Warren: People just make choices that are poor choices. And it is possible, too, Micole, that this is the only time and the first time that he did this, which goes along with something that we've been talking about a lot internally, is just because somebody's behavior is one way at one period of time in the beginning.

Amy Warren: Doesn't mean that that's how their behavior's gonna stay over time.

Amy Warren: And, you know, we do two different kinds of screening. We do, okay, you're going to hire somebody, you want to screen them, you want to see, if they've behaved like this sheriff has behaved in the past, and do you want to take that as a part of consideration on whether or not you're going to offer them employment?

Micole Garatti: Yeah.

Amy Warren: And then we also screen current employees.

Micole Garatti: Job.

Amy Warren: Cadences, like once a month, once a quarter, once a year, and the reason for that is we are seeing so many more and more instances of people's behavior over time changing. This is a good example. We don't know, but if this person is… if this is the first time that this person did this.

Amy Warren: Right?

Micole Garatti: Yeah.

Amy Warren: You need to make sure that how you're monitoring screening for people, you're thinking.

Micole Garatti: Yeah.

Amy Warren: The fact that their behavior can change over time, and it can also be incident-specific, too. Sometimes there's things that happen, and people react to them, and have a strong reaction to them.

Micole Garatti: Yeah.

Micole Garatti: Yeah, 100%. I think it's important to differentiate some cases where it might be a one-time incident versus many choices and many instances. For this particular guy, he drove by that woman's house several times, he sent dozens of messages to her, he reached out, he was using his police uniforms and vehicles several times to go outside of his jurisdiction to find her places. I think that in this particular case, the level of escalation has gone far beyond anything you can take back because it was so many instances of it. But I think in a case like potentially the DoorDash driver, where it seemingly was just one instance. It was a very bad choice. Hopefully that person, you know, learns from their mistakes.

Amy Warren: Right.

Micole Garatti: Doesn't engage in something like that ever again, and can self-reflect on that. To your point, there's a difference between a one-time mistake and over and over and over again choices that continue to harm people longer term.

Amy Warren: And I think, you know, employers have to make sure that they have policies and solutions in place that are solving for both at the same time.

Micole Garatti: 100%, yeah, 100%.

Amy Warren: I think that's… that's really the key. You've got your code of conduct, you have your policies, but it's also being able to make sure that people are adhering to that. Even going back to the Coldplay concert, people change all the time, and their behavior's gonna change. And, how somebody is today, and what their behaviors are today, aren't always an indicator of what their behaviors were in the past. And I think the hard part is that we live in a world where if you make a bad choice, like the DoorDash driver, or you get a viral moment, like the Coldplay couple, right? I don't have to call them couple, the people that were having the affair, you know, you can't walk that back, and I…

Micole Garatti: No.

Amy Warren: You know, there's not a lot of wiggle room these days to make mistakes, although the mistakes that people are making and the choices that people are making tell you a lot about these people, right?

Micole Garatti: Yeah.

Amy Warren: You're sitting here, and I think you know we could say a vast majority of people in both of these instances, the DoorDash driver or the Coldplay issue, would not be making those same choices, and that's the key. You know, if you get a whole bunch of people in a room, you know, what is the general consensus on appropriateness, right?

Micole Garatti: Yeah, I think the other thing is it's critical to have accountability. Like if the DoorDash driver not been fired, not been facing a felony it's one of those situations where would this person learn from their mistakes?

Micole Garatti: And would this person even think that their behavior was a mistake? But I think that accountability is critical in that kind of change in behavior. Hopefully everyone involved has the consequences that are appropriate for the actions that they took. And that they learn from these behaviors, and that they don't do it again. Our own data shows that's not necessarily the case, because when somebody has one misconduct incident, they generally have a lot of them. Like, 19 of them, I think our recent research showed. But…

Amy Warren: Well, I think, like, that's the pattern.

Micole Garatti: Yeah, exactly.

Amy Warren: A pattern of behavior, and I think that that's what you want to try to identify and determine on your own, and whether or not that's a pattern of behavior that would work well in your organization or not. And I think, you know, one of the patterns of behavior that we keep seeing over and over again is in the healthcare system.

Micole Garatti: Oh, yes.

Amy Warren: Yet another incident or something going on in healthcare. Problematic, and so we had a viral TikTok that was a whole incident of a woman who was having a baby.

Micole Garatti: It wasn't…

Amy Warren: Wait in the waiting room while she…

Micole Garatti: Oh, it was so much worse than that.

Amy Warren: Yeah, so tell me more of the details.

Micole Garatti: Yeah. Yeah, so, I mean…

Micole Garatti: Historically speaking, there has been a lot of racism in healthcare, and especially among Black women in the healthcare that they receive has historically been not as good as…

Micole Garatti: What other segments of the population receive, and especially even women in labor and women in childcare. Women’s health as a whole is understudied, underfunded. Women experience significant levels of sexism in healthcare, and what was horrible… I watched the video, actually, just scrolling through my feed, and my… I couldn't talk for several minutes. This woman was going in in active labor. She drove to the hospital. When she got to the hospital, the staff told her that she was using the wrong entrance, and she had to go around and use another entrance, even though she was literally in active labor. When she went to the other entrance, they didn't have a wheelchair ready for her. Mind you, this mom called ahead to make sure that the hospital was ready for her. Thankfully, this woman had her mom at the facility with her, so her mom was running around this hospital trying to find her daughter, who was in active labor in their car.

The mom finally finds a wheelchair, goes to pick up her kid in the… who's in active labor, and the nurse is just standing there, not helping at all, just watching the mom try and get her kid, who's in active labor, out of the car into the wheelchair so she can deliver her inside. And then they made her wait 30 minutes in the waiting room, 30 minutes in active labor, before they took her back.

And then, while she's in labor, the nurse, instead of taking her right up to labor and delivery, starts doing a normal intake procedure. So, who's your doctor? How long have you been doing XYZ? What's your name? Well, we can't take you up until you sign this paperwork. When do you think the baby's coming? How long have you been in labor? And her mom is like, what do you think is happening right now? She's screaming in pain, she can't sit still, and after all of that, 12 minutes later, this mom gave birth, and the kid came out with the kid's eyes open because of the stress. What the hell? I had no words.

Amy Warren: I think that this is a moment where video and recording things becomes beneficial, right?

Micole Garatti: 100%.

Amy Warren: Yes.

Micole Garatti: Had this mom not stepped in to record this, how many other patients have experienced the same exact situation with that one nurse?

Amy Warren: And I think about this not just in the immediacy and all of the things that you talk about, but I think about it in relation to everybody that was a part of that video that was a staff person. They're gonna have a career, they're gonna have a long career history, and if I were to put myself and put the hat of a future employer on, any of those people that were staff that were involved in perpetrating this experience by this patient, I would want to know that.

Micole Garatti: 100%.

Amy Warren: There's a whole bunch of different layers of this. Number one, this video went wildly viral.

Micole Garatti: 23 million people saw it within days.

Amy Warren: So, if you are an employer that's going to bring one of these people on board as an employee, you have to be ready for the potential of this resurfacing for years.

Micole Garatti: Years. Yeah, 100%.

Amy Warren: And you also have to be ready and prepared for that.

Amy Warren: And, you know, you have to take this into consideration, or you should be taking this into consideration as part of the hiring of somebody who's potentially one of the people that was participating in this. I think this is a really interesting example of where, you have somebody who is documenting an experience of customer service, right?

Micole Garatti: Yeah, 100%.

Amy Warren: And that customer service is woefully, woefully inadequate. Woefully inadequate.

Micole Garatti: And a violation of policy. You've been to a hospital before, I've been to a hospital before. Triage is a real thing.

Amy Warren: Well, this is the whole thing. Not just a violation of policy, I mean, people's lives were potentially in danger in this situation.

Micole Garatti: Yeah, 100%. But that's the policy, is, triaging is for that reason. Right.

Amy Warren: And I think you have to really take into consideration that social media impacts you as an employer in two ways. It is the behaviors and things that people may post on their own, on their own accounts that work for you, that you have to understand, that they're posting publicly.

And then it's also the recording, the experience of whomever your customer or your patient is them documenting that and having the potential to have a global audience of that experience. And so, I think it's really important to understand this in the complete totality, and how you need to be looking at things and being concerned. And even, too, we were talking about… I don't know why I'm so on the Coldplay thing today, going back to the Coldplay thing, I would want to know.

Micole Garatti: Yeah.

Amy Warren: If I was gonna hire either one of those people that they were involved in that, because chances are, when you go and bring that… those people into your organization, that moment is going to come up again, and you have to make a decision if you want to have that or not. And I think that these are… these moments are going to become so much more.

Micole Garatti: Yeah.

Amy Warren: than not common, you know? And just to kind of bring it all home to some of the things that we've found in the last 30 days that have come up in our screenings and reports, so when we talk about these things, this is a combination of, hey, what's going on in the media of people getting fired, and then also, what are we finding?

‍Micole Garatti: Yeah.

Amy Warren: And, one of the things that we found was we're screening for, a university executive, and, this is wild that it was.

Micole Garatti: Oh, yeah.

Amy Warren: A video that came up accusing the person of trading grades for sexual favors.

Micole Garatti: Though, obviously, this is totally another creepy uncle incident, where… yeah.

Amy Warren: We kind of had off-the-creepy uncle Thanksgiving thing, because these other incidents were so big. We gotta go back to that. We'll tie it.

Micole Garatti: I know, well, well, that's… yeah, but like…

Amy Warren: Oh, creepy uncle, like…

Micole Garatti: Yeah, I don't know how you come back from this. You just uninvite them from Thanksgiving when they start trading favors with students, it's such an abuse of power on so many levels. There’s the power dynamic, and the creepy sexual things, and then if your family found out about your uncle, why would you want your the kids and the grandkids to be around that creepy-ass dude? 

Amy Warren: Yeah, and I think, like, in this instance, you know, you've got somebody who is applying to be an executive at a university, they have this in their background. If they hadn't screened their social media, the video would not have surfaced. It wouldn't have come up. And you risk of hiring somebody where this is, like, full-on recorded that this is happening, right?

Micole Garatti: Yeah.

Amy Warren: have gone out, like, it would have popped up. And again.

Micole Garatti: Yeah, yeah, 100%.

Amy Warren: It's an incidence of, you have to know who you're hiring. Like, know who you're hiring. It doesn't mean that you can't hire people that have issues in the past. I mean. I'm a big proponent of giving people second chances and people learning from past behavior, but you've got to at least have those conversations and be ready for it. And, you know, as we get ready for Thanksgiving. And thinking about all the conversations that happened at the dinner table.

Think about how you're gonna behave at the dinner table. Somebody's gonna have a camera, and I think, Micole, you were spot on. Is the camera gonna be, you know, one of the younger people in the room? But, you know, age doesn't really matter as much anymore. Almost half the workplace is a digital native. So, you know, it's people from all age brackets that are gonna be there, and not just taking in and participating in the conversation, but taking parts of the conversation, posting it online.

Amy Warren: And thinking about, hey, You know.

Amy Warren: Where is this gonna go? Because I guarantee, next month…

Micole Garatti: Yeah, next month is gonna be in…

Amy Warren: A ton of things.

Micole Garatti: Yeah, yeah.

Amy Warren: People did X, Y, and Z, right?

Micole Garatti: Thanksgiving.

Amy Warren: at Thanksgiving, and it showed up online, and you know, of course we're gonna have the legit, how many people are deep-frying their turkey.

Micole Garatti: No.

Amy Warren: Turkey incidents, right?

Micole Garatti: I mean, that's not misconduct, but please don't do that. Yeah.

Amy Warren: We're gonna have all that stuff, we're gonna have the fun stuff. You know, but then we're also going to have a whole thread of behavior where people did ridiculousness, and we're not even talking about Black Friday shopping, right? Like, I mean, way back in the day, replay, when there used to be mobs and mobs of people throwing kids in front of places to get that TV, to get that…

Micole Garatti: Don't abuse your children or your elders.

Amy Warren: Yes.

Micole Garatti: or your spouses to, get any Black Friday.

Amy Warren: Or buy online!

Amy Warren: Yeah.

Micole Garatti: No abuse, we… this is Fama’s new tagline, just kidding, but no abuse + be a good person, do good things.

Amy Warren: So, yeah, Micole and I will be here, again, 30 days from now. We'll be talking about all the ridiculous choices that people made.

Amy Warren: how they got themselves fired, right? Because… Amy!

Micole Garatti: And I'm Micole.

Amy Warren: And this is 9 to 5 Nightmares.

Micole Garatti: And we talk about misconduct so you can avoid it.

Amy Warren: Alright, everybody, have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and don't end up on our show!

Micole Garatti: Please don't. Please don't. We would love to stop doing this show. Please don't.