The same thing happened to me before on 3 companies I worked for since college. One of my co-workers started using pen cameras when they were talking to one of the black dudes who hated whitey. He was called Malcolm X’ behind his back and it took a lot of acting skills to pretend it was normal.
“One of my co-workers started using pen cameras when they were talking to one of the black dudes who hated whitey”
This was the late 90’s. I bought the smallest recorder I could and carried it in my shirt pocket. I could turn it on while reaching for my ink pen. I had a set of carefully labeled tapes so I had a record of various conversations. You never knew which employee was going to use a conversation with you to “go for the gold.” I was conscious of when I was being baited and never rose to the bait. The guys who got in trouble were not politically savvy and would let themselves be drawn in. It was a game. None of the blacks actually managed to get money out of the company (to my knowledge) but they did damage careers.