Ohio woman resigns from her medical billing job and discovers her former manager is telling clients she was fired for misconduct involving patient accounts: ‘I don’t want this rumor to damage my new job before I even start’ – FAIL Blog

The move here is interesting because it is not random gossip. It is targeted. Telling specific clients in the same field not to contact someone, using language that implies a HIPAA violation or worse, is the kind of thing that sounds like a personal grudge wearing a professional costume. The you know what you did response to a direct question is also doing a lot of work, mostly confirming that whoever sent it understood exactly what they were implying and had no intention of walking it back.