My Personal Hell - Part three - The rest of the story

(If you've read part two, most of the following should make sense. If you haven't, good luck)

(once again, I tried to keep it short. I failed)

Where to start? A little preface. Most of the material below comes from things I remembered over the last few years, but never made it to consciousness while I was trying to explain the situation in question. Some of it I remembered on my own (one item I had totally forgotten about until today), a lot of it I eventually remembered or was made aware of while talking to other former coworkers over the last few years.


One of the issues I encountered when trying to make a quick reply to my boss was that he had worked day shift and could not be contacted except in case of emergency. The manager that ran the department over which I was responsible for training was out of town and one of the two others assigned to training in the same area as myself was off that night. I was scheduled to facilitate a class that night and really didn't have much time to devote to figuring out what had happened.

One of the co-workers that was working that night, I found out latter, was busy interviewing people who had attended the messed up October class while I was facilitating my class and trying to figure out how to respond to my boss's email. Several months after I was fired, I realized something else.

When I thought about it, I could not figure out how I could possibly have accidentally put the "bad" sign-in sheet in with all the others I had sent to the vendor company. Then one day I realized that it wasn't until closer to December that I started submitting paperwork directly to the vendor. Initially, all paperwork submitted to the vendor passed through the hands of someone else. The individual through whom all paperwork passed on it's way to the vendor was the same person who was doing the "investigation", one of my coworkers.

Additionally, on the night I wrote my original response, I discussed the situation and my proposed response with this same coworker . His reply to me was something to the effect that I should go with the response that most saved our companies face (basically, what I wound up submitting). Our boss would probably appreciate the company oriented spin and there was something said about being a team player ( I think referring to our manager).



Why would a normally conscientious trainer conduct a class that he knew he was not qualified to conduct? A little background here will help. In the training department, there were essentially two groups. One concentrated on one area of the operation while the others dealt with a different area. I was the de-facto lead of my group (which, oddly enough, we all knew intrinsically but was never actually said to me until after I was told to take a hike). To answer the question, he presented the class because I told him to (well, not intentionally).

We were given instructions (by our manager) that the training in question should be presented to groups of new employees at the beginning of their first night of operational training. Not that this would be difficult. It amounted to reading 2 paragraphs verbatim out of the trainers manual, presenting a video tape then handing out (and grading) the associated test (45 minutes max).

On this particular night, however, we had an issue due to another rule we tried very hard to follow. Not very long before I was supposed to go into the class and present the material, I found out that one of the other trainers had scheduled two current employees to arrive well before their regular scheduled start time for some specialized training. This training could only be facilitated by myself and the trainer who had made the arrangements. Employees who were brought in early for training took precedent over any other training. After being harassed for a few minutes about my decision to work with the specialized training and put off the vendor training till later in the night, I finally said to the gentleman who did the class that if he wanted it done now (the vendor training), he was going to have to do it himself. I put the materials on somebodies desk (I think his) and left to go do what I felt had priority. Surprise, he thought I was actually telling him to do the class, not mouthing off to get him off my back. Oops!

What would make me think my manager would want me to sugar coat the facts a little? The phrase "it better be good" (or what ever the actual verbiage) was a start. It also didn't help knowing that since before I started in the training position, trainers at my facility had been generating inaccurate paperwork on at least a monthly basis. Internal company regulations and, eventually, vendor company regulations required that employees who completed training and were certified to work in a certain area of the operation were required to complete an annual, 3 hour re-certification class. As much as I didn't like it, every one of those 1 hour re-certification sessions I (and those before and after me) facilitated, magically became 3 hours on paper (I should also note that, while often retraining was not always in the classroom, all the certified personnel received more than 3 hours of training or retraining throughout the year, sometimes as part of work group start-up meetings or by personal interaction and coaching by trainers, supervisors and lead service agents).

More personally, I had often seen my manager fiddle with the "paperwork" in order to comply with some work place regulation. At some point, I think in 2004, some employee designations and classifications were changed with a result being that many of us were suddenly "required" to take a daily lunch break. I had problems with this for several reasons. Briefly: It would essentially cost me 2.5 hrs pay per week; while I was often able to conform, the majority in the same classification never really had the opportunity and I didn't feel right goofing off if they couldn't; Lunch at 3:00am?. Anyway, my manager knew that I often did not really have time to stop for a lunch, especially in the winter. While he would sometimes get on me about the lunch thing, I would again explain why I hadn't been able to clock out for lunch the previous few days. We used an electronic time clock that could be accessed through any managers computer. My manager took to making adjustments to my clock times to show a lunch break every day.

In December, 2004 and/or January, 2005 I started paying closer attention to my time sheets. While I did not have access to the time system myself, the administrative assistants did, and would gladly print out a listing of an individuals punch times for as far back as needed. With absolutely no memory of what I had done on any given day, it was easy to tell if I had actually taken a lunch break or if my manager had "inserted" one for me (If it showed exactly 30 minutes off the clock, he did it). Usually, when he inserted a break, he adjusted my start and end times to compensate. Usually. On more than one occasion he failed to make the correct adjustment, in effect taking money out of my pocket. I'm quite sure it was an oversight and not him intentionally lightening my wallet. I did at least once point out to him the mistake he made, with a print out in my hand. He may have wondered how I got it.

While I'm on the subject of my manager, there is one more thing that I would like to mention. On the occasions (thankfully, not many) I thought I had made a serious mistake or felt that I had something to do with something not working correctly, I did not hesitate to take the issue directly to my supervisor. I always preferred they hear it from me rather than from someone else.

We would regularly have training department staff meetings to discuss upcoming events, foreseen issues and any issues we had encountered since the last meeting. Several months after I was fired, I was reminded by a former coworker that one of these meetings occurred the night of or within a day or two of the messed up class. While this former coworker did not remember every exact word spoken, he reminded me that we had in fact informed our manager of the class that was presented by the unqualified trainer, that I had made the decision to work with the early arriving employees and the reasoning behind that decision, and (I'm pretty sure he told me this) that I had asked this same coworker to fix the problem (reteach the class).

I can not hold it against my former manager if he forgot about this meeting and what was discussed. After all, I did too. And we both forgot to follow up to make sure the problem was corrected. But once I was reminded of the meeting, I started to have some vague memories and impressions of the occasion. One of these is, for some reason, I see (or imagine) myself saying to the group something like "we'll just white out ????????'s signature and replace it with someones who can teach the class." I don't really think I said or even thought this at the time, but I may have. At that time I was involved in a dispute with both the vendor company and, to some extent, with my manager.

When we performed any training for this vendor company, obviously sign-in sheets were generated. No problem. The problem was that they wanted trainers and those attending the classes (who were not direct employees of the vendor company) to record their social security number on the sign-in sheet. In an age of identity theft, I felt this was completely wrong, arrogant, stupid, obnoxious, (fill in any stronger adjective here) and, quite possibly, illegal. To say I let my feelings be known would be an understatement. Both to management at my company and through training representatives of the vendor company. My manager took both sides of the issue. He both agreed that asking for SS #'s was not right and that we had to complete the forms as the vendor required. (After quite a bit of debate higher up that I, a solution was reached that did not require the use of SS#'s. How many of the SS#'s written on the earliest sign-in sheets that were fake may never be known. I'd venture to guess, most of them. (No idea who came up with that idea)

I have often wondered if I was actually fired to satisfy management at the vendor company (like a sacrificial lamb) instead of getting rid of me for what they actually claimed ("willful disregard of company regulations" or something like that, I think). After all, I must have made myself known well enough to them that when, a few months later, the powers that be at the vendor company came across a sign-in sheet with my name on it that looked wrong, they may well have started drooling.

And why not go ahead and pull the trigger. After all, the first week in January, I answered no when we were asked in a training staff meeting if we were planing to move with the company to the new operation facility in a different city. Yep. Just about two weeks before they gave me the axe, I pretty much told the company that we would be divorcing on December 31st. Two weeks before.

Two months after, something appeared in a newspaper from an individual who was worried if they had done the right thing. This person knew about two weeks in advance that a coworker was about to get fired and did not say anything to the coworker. While every thing about this letter points to a certain individual with whom I once worked and greatly respected, I'm sure that the letter did not involve my situation. But, on the off chance that it did, like it or not, this person did the right thing.

To return full circle, it always seemed a little odd that the whole firing event happened while the one manager who could probably have smoothed over the situation for me was out of town and the coworker who I relied on the most was on vacation.

Epilogue

I'm sure there are things I've been wanting to get out for a long time that, for some reason, I can not remember right this moment. I may drop them in some day in the future, and I may not. At least, everything I can think of about the whole situation and a few extras has at last been let out of my mind. Maybe I can return thinking about other things.

Did I make some mistakes? Certainly. Did I deserve to be tossed out on my ear? The farther away I get from the event, the less I think so. Am I wholely to blame for the entire situation. I think not. But what do I know.

But there is one question left to answer. With all this in mind, what am I supposed to say in an employment interview if I'm asked why I was fired?