Concerned my only co-worker might be in possession of illegal digital media.

As a disclaimer, this post will be lightly mentioning/discussing NSFW topics and illegal pornographic content.

I (20M) work in a very small business. I started recently— something like two or three months ago. It’s me, my boss (~80M), and my co-worker (~50M), who had been there at least ten years, if not twice as long. For the sake of this post, my boss’s name will be Ernie, and my co-worker will be Phil.

Ernie is this really kind (very likely undiagnosed neurodivergent) old man. He personally offered me this job because of work I did with a device he worked with that he was impressed by.

Phil is also a really kind person. He constantly offers to get me food, buys pastries from the bakery across from us and lets me have some, bought me gas when me and my partner’s car ran out. He’s been nothing but good to me and everybody who knows him has a positive opinion.

Over the last week, while our boss is on a business trip I’ve heard certain chimes coming from Phil’s computer. I swore I knew what they were from— and by the end of the week, it hit me. They’re donation chimes from Chaturbate.

And I thought: surely, he’s not watching cam girls twelve feet away from me, right? I thought it must be something else. Maybe an old gambling site? I just needed confirmation that it wasn’t true, even though I already figured it wasn’t.

That same day, I get the opportunity to check, and sure enough, in recently closed tabs: Chaturbate.

After processing that for the rest of the work day, I eventually concluded that I have to see if he watches more than one. I really, really wanted it to just be his wife or something. So when he left, I said I was staying later because my ride was going to be late.

However, when I got on that computer in the back, I found that he had wiped his history. Okay, fair enough. I also found that he has it set it to never save his history and remove recently closed tabs when the browser is closed. This started rubbing me the wrong way.

Trying to dig deeper— just, trying to see if it could be his wife or something, really— I ended up stumbling upon some really suspicious files in the ‘recently accessed section’ and suspicious folders in quick access. Folders named inconspicuous things, such as ‘Phil/Phil/old pc/Phil/‘. One folder has folders with woman’s names, and numbered videos and photos with these woman’s names in them.

However, I was only able to gather this from the recent files and the folders referenced in the file explorer. I have no way to access them— they’re from some kind of external drive. His phone, or a USB, is something. I’ve tried all the USBs and drives I can find around the shop— none of them lead to these.

So at this rate, the best-case scenario is that he watches camgirls, has favorites, and saves the videos and watches them at work. But I can’t stop shaking this really dreadful feeling that it’s worse than the best case scenario. The deeper I look and the harder I search, the more and more it feels like he’s gone to extreme lengths to make these files inaccessible— and while that makes sense for the best-case scenario, I can’t help but wonder if it isn’t.

I don’t wanna get the guy fired if he just has this obsession with camgirls. He seems like a really nice guy and really, it’s his own personal business what he wants to do with his time and money. Frankly, I’m always playing games on work hours. There isn’t enough work to do in the eight hours of a work day. He definitely spends more time scrolling or something anyways. But I can’t shake this anxious, unsettled feeling, when I think about the names; the files; the lengths he seems to go to protect these things.

I know the best thing to do would probably be to call the police and have them show up during work hours, right? But it’s only Phil here. I love this job. It’s the only job I’ve ever had that I’m not just barely tolerating. The moment I call the police, he knows it’s me calling the police on him. If this isn’t something serious, most of the time when I’m at work, I’m going to be alone with the guy who knows I know he watches cam girls and called the police on him. Or honestly, even worse: he gets fired. I’ll be here alone. I love my boss— he’ll be lacking a competent employee. Lee knows most of the stuff. I’m still learning. The business might not even be sustainable anymore without Phil. I don’t know.

I’m tempted to install a hidden camera behind that desk or a screen recording program, but I don’t know about that, between legality, ethically, so on so forth. I just want to know it’s not worse than I think so I don’t have to call the police, but every other time I looked to see ‘it’s not worse than I think’ it’s always worse than I think. I guess that’s why I have such a bad feeling about it.

So, what should I do? I plan on calling the police eventually, even if I can’t find anything concrete, because God forbid he’s secretly part of some trafficking ring, or purchasing illicit content from others. That’s not something I want to risk ignoring and letting happen. But also, this job is one of the best things that has ever happened to me. I really don’t want to have to put my enjoyment of it, my position in it, or the integrity of the business, in jeopardy.

Any advice is appreciated. I don’t really have many people to talk to about this, so just any input at all is really nice. Thanks for reading.