One of my co-workers (who I am friends with) came in for her second shift and found that someone had spit a large lugi into her water bottle that she keeps in the common fridge, and that someone had tampered with her work for yesterday's shift.

She came to me asking for advice explaining that she wanted to set up a voice recorder in an attempt to catch the culprit talking about these actions.

Does she have the right to record the two suspected employees in the common room without thier knowledge or consent?

She told me she doesn't plan on revealing the tape unless she catches them specifically talking about the spit or tampered work.

How would you progress in her situation?

ETA: management and HR are iffy on weither or not they would support such an action, but there is a notice on the main board of the common room stating that the company reserves the right to record and video employees on the premises.

More fun is to make a chocolate something with ex-lax chocolate and put her name on it. Soon she will find out who it is and can thus go to HR with the harassment charges. Voice recorder does nothing now video does. Depending on the state voice recording is iffy yet usually video is good to go since is easier to use in court.

It's a criminal offense in some states. A felony in Ohio if it's diseased. There's the DNA in the bottle. Limited number of people it could have come from. Depends on how far someone wants to take it to get justice.

I'm more asking the legality of her audio recording, and her possible course of action if management takes poorly to the arrival of said audio recording.

Such as, can she sue for wrongful termination if she looses her job because she recorded them, or can they even fire her for taking an unannounced audio recording?

If she records two people without their permission, that is most likely a criminal offense in any state, presumably with minor jail time or fines as a punishment. I highly doubt she could sue if she were to be fired for criminal activity.

Some states are a 1 party state, meaning as long as one person in the conversation knows of the recording, then it's legal. So, she could potentially enlist someone to help her by asking around and recording what gets said. You'd have to check to see if your state is a 1 or 2 party state.

All that aside, there's little hope of a positive outcome on this. She just needs to keep her shit secured and start looking for work elsewhere. Someone there knows who did it, and they're ok with it or it would be resolved by now. Nobody is suddenly going to be motivated to do the right thing because of the threat of a recording. The work atmosphere there is obviously one with a lack of respect. Not just one person, but all the people who know and didn't say or do shit.

I won't go into detail, but my wife experienced a similar issue, except she found out about MONTHS later when someone mentioned it to her thinking she knew about the incident. (Because EVERYONE knew about the incident.) We formally asked for the offender to be punished and explanations from those who were in positions of authority and aware of the problem but refused to inform her of the problem. She got nothing.  No lawyers would take her case, saying "you're not going to win a case because someone was mean to you." It was infuriating, but they were right. Eventually they terminated the offender for "something else," but by then, it was understood that employees didn't have to respect other employees if they didn't get caught. She gave up a 17 year career there shortly after.

Simple battery is a $300 fine in Kansas, and I'll gladly pay it if I ever find that fucker, but after having gone through all that I'll tell you the best thing to do is find work elsewhere. It's not what happened that's the problem, it's that NOBODY seems to think it's a big deal. She should get out of there. ETA: and you should too.

ETA...again: I shouldn't say "nobody" cares, as you seem to care. I'm just saying if one person did this and nobody knows who, I'd be surprised. She obviously, and perhaps you do to, thinks that someone is going to be willing to talk about it openly allowing her to possibly get a recording. I don't think you want to work where people can fuck with people like that and then talk about it freely and not have to be worried about getting fired, but that the person seeking to identify the person has to worry about getting fired. That's pretty messed up.

Thank you for your advice, I'll pass it on.

Im sure y'all got it narrowed down to who it is.  Accidents happen all the time in the work place.

CT is a one party state but since you would NOT be a party to the conversation you cannot record it.

The huge mix of laws is why security cameras rarely record audio.

This is at least a starting point: recording laws stste-by-state