I know I haven’t been around for awhile, just a quick update I was discharged before my probationary period. Mainly this was because I wouldn’t adjust how I handled things for my new employer. Unlike a private business, a governmental agency has a lot of rules. There is a lot of leeway for those rules, but having been an auditor for almost five years I have some very strict lines about how things need to be done, and I won’t look away at other things.
This doesn’t surprise me. If they had waited another 45 days or so they wouldn’t be able to get rid of me as then I would be full time union member. Now, they do still supposedly like me, the Controller was basically crying when she let me have the news. She actually remarked that it was awkward that she was crying and feeling bad and it didn’t look like it bothered me at all.
Honestly, the only portion that bothers me is waiting to hear if I get unemployment or not. I hated that job with a passion, I hated the politics involved and I hated how the group I worked with treated other people. They would routinely say the most catty things about the other department staff. A few of the comments had to do with the fact that “our group” had actual four year educations while the rest of the department didn’t. Coming from a blue collar family (or poorer) that really bothered me. The amount of entitlement that they all had was rather galling.
There is a huge amount of issues I now feel like I can talk about, and I will probably start rolling them out (now that I don’t have to worry about keeping my job). I think my most frustrating item at the moment (and the reason I think I will get unemployment) is they say now that I don’t meet the performance needed for my position. The sad fact is my first month review said I had two small items (just things I wasn’t used to) and the second month review said I had cleared that up, that I was working perfectly and there were no issues. The third and fourth month review were that I was doing better than expected and they were happy with me. Then five months went by with absolutely no review, but talking in general there were no problems at all. Sure there were questions I was asking, mainly because I had never done accounting duties before (auditing is not the same as accounting contrary to popular belief) but they all were good with my questions and when I asked if my performance was ok then said absolutely.
Then my nine/tenth month review (first one in five months) gets pushed back a couple of weeks. I know this is a bad sign and I already am applying at other places now. This is right after a short period when I told certain departments that they couldn’t do certain things. It was against GAAP, GASB (different accounting requirements) and in one case against RCW (state law) and County policy. Don’t get me wrong, this isn’t any big whistleblower moment, nothing was an actual clear violations, but they were in the grey areas and I told them that I wouldn’t do those duties in the grey area and that in my professional opinion they needed to follow the actual procedures.
Now to go back to what I was saying. This last review I step in. I have already cleared out my desk over the last week (no one noticed as I slowly moved things out). I had a gut feeling since my probationary period (where I am allowed no grievance with union support) was ending. She sat me down and said “well it just didn’t work out and they would be letting me go” (at least with a couple week severance package, enough to keep us going for awhile). I smiled at her, I did comment that this is out of the blue and no one told me I was doing poorly. She seemed taken aback (I was nice about it). Then again it’s not like I had any training (and after three weeks of being there I wasn’t allowed to talk to the previous accounting analyst for help because she was in a turf war with another analyst). She did say she would give me a reference for appropriate jobs (she thinks I am a great auditor, but I suspect she wouldn’t recommend me for a straight up accounting job… sorry I don’t hide things in the books). It won’t effect me too much, I am really only looking for audit/inspector type work at the moment anyways. I decided I am not really cut out for adjusting how I account for things depending on my boss, there really is only one way that it should be done, whether or not there is grey area.
I am hoping to hear about unemployment this week, but if that doesn’t work Robert Half (a specialist accounting firm) can get me temp work while they look for permanent work for me.
That’s it for now, will talk more later. I have a lot more (not just work related) to talk about.
A Girl U Should Know 