Employment lost

Dear Bob …

I was gainfully employed in a large university until recently.

Shortly after I was hired, friction developed with my boss, who had six direct reports, of whom I was the only one in a supervisorory role. I wanted to meet with my team on my first or second day to introduce myself and start talking about the organization. My boss told me I was not allowed to hold a team meeting. There were also a number of issues where the written job description was not honored, with my boss withholding information critical to my duties.

I had many dealings with individuals from throughout the university. Most were quite satisfactory, but in one case a researcher asked me to take shortcuts with paperwork related to federal funds that would not only have violated internal procedures, but were questionable from an ethical perspective besides. Specifically, he asked me to reimburse a student for about $1000 for travel that the student had taken. I told him I needed receipts. He responded that the student had lost them. I then requested a letter describing the circumstances, on receipt of which I would process the check request.

The researcher refused, instead demanding that I provide reimbursement as a salary item without any documentation. I refused. Eventually, the student did find the receipts and received proper reimbursement. However, the researcher wrote a scathing review regarding my performance. His evaluation said, “I believe it would be a serious mistake to retain this employee. She will not be able to meet the important administrative needs of the School. If she is retained, I will certainly not deal with her and I will advise other faculty members accordingly.”

I was still in my six-month probationary period, during which an employee can be fired for any reason. Apart from the obvious issues around stupid management (punishing someone for refusing to break the law, rewarding someone who threatens to undermine processes, believing that management’s main function is doing what the customer asks regardless of fiduciary and legal responsibility, etc.), does this raise any legal issues? It sounds to me like a case of wrongful dismissal. This situation may even compromise my ability to be hired elsewhere in the University … and this is not a big town.

What should I do?

– Steamed and unemployed

Dear Steamed …

It’s clear you were put into an impossible situation. You managed to keep your hands clean, which was well done and admirable. Good for you.

It’s highly likely your employer was within its rights to terminate you. If the rules of engagement regarding the probationary period were clearly stated, almost certainly no cause was needed for termination. And in fact, in most states no cause is needed, period.

Every state is different in this regard, though. While I’m essentially certain that if this had happened in Texas you’d have no grounds for any complaint at all (and should consider yourself lucky you weren’t executed just because it’s kinda fun to do that kinda thing with uppity subordinates), your mileage may vary in your state of residence.

But I’m not generally in favor of suing employers or former employers anyway. It’s usually a losing proposition, and it makes getting the next job that much more difficult.

Here’s what I think your best course of action is. First, document everything to the best of your ability. If you were able to copy any relevant documents, so much the better. If not, write a chronological, just-the-facts narrative describing every conversation with your supervisor and the offending researcher. This narrative should be entirely devoid of speculation regarding the researcher’s motivation for asking you to violate procedure, nor should it make any judgments about how the researcher should have behaved. Those would weaken your narrative. It has to be just the facts as they happened.

With a copy of the documentation in hand, meet with the head of human resources. Be polite but firm that it must be the head and not a subordinate. Here are the two keys to makng the meeting successful: (1) Remain calm, professional and unemotional throughout the meeting. If you fail to do that, you won’t get the HR Director’s support; and (2) Ask for help, rather than making threats. In general, people respond favorably to requests for help. Threats rarely work.

You should summarize the events, provide the documentation, and finish by saying something like, “I’d like your help with this. You can see I was asked to violate procedure, and in effect terminated because I refused to do so. Because of this I’ll have a very hard time being hired by the university again, which I think you’ll agree is entirely inappropriate. So my first question is, what do you suggest for both of us as the best course of action?”

The reason you should ask first is that you should leave room for the possibility of a pleasant surprise. While it’s unlikely, it’s certainly possible that the HR director will respond, “Our policy in these circumstances is to reinstate the employee on a temporary basis, suspending with pay while we investigate.” Or something. The worst that could happen is for the HR director to respond, “My best advice to you is to just drop it and find another job somewhere,” which is to say, you have nothing to lose by asking.

If the response isn’t satisfactory, counter with what you want out of the meeting: “What I’d like is to have any suggestion that I was fired for cause expunged from my records, along with my last performance review, or at least for you to investigate the situation. At a minimum I want to include a rebuttal of my last review in the file. One other thing: I’d like to verify that your policy when contacted by any potential future employer is to verify my employment and nothing more.”

If the HR director asks why he/she should make these commitments, you should, I think, ask what the university’s policy is when an employee contests a performance appraisal and has information regarding potential malfeasance on the part of another employee. I’d be fairly certain there are provisions for this kind of situation.

That’s one way of dealing with the situation. Another, which is probably better, is to simply drop the whole matter. Most likely the HR department merely confirms employment and prohibits any providing of references, positive or negative, and if the University is as big a rat’s nest as you described in your letter, I can’t imagine why you’d want to work there again anyway.

– Bob

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