STATIC DISCLAIMER: All the stuff in here is purely my opinions, and they tend to change depending on what mood I'm in. If you're going to get bitter if I say something about you that you don't like, then maybe don't read. I avoid using names as much as possible, and would request that people who know me do the same in their comments. Basically, I often vent my frustrations on here, so if you happen to be someone who frustrates me, expect to read a description of someone very much like you in here!

Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Slander and malign

It's becoming more and more clear to me as time goes on and I'm forced to have ongoing dealings with my previous employer, that something rather evil is going on. I'm receiving occasional emails from my ex-employer's IT department, whether addressed to me or to my current employer's support email address, that say something along the lines of the following (paraphrased for clarity):
Before he left here, Justin did x and now we're experiencing problem y. We believe the two are related, and thus this is his fault. Could this be the case?

My first reaction to these emails would be to reply with a scathingly vile deluge of nastiness, which ends with "It all worked when I was there, so it's pretty obvious who the problem is, isn't it biatch?" However, I can't do this, because my ex-boss is now my current customer, and to call him a "biatch" may well put our business dealings with him on an off-footing.

Basically, none of this would be a problem except that my ex-boss's management "style" is the only reason I didn't like my old job, and so I said to the big boss when I resigned: "When my boss leaves, I'd like to interview for his job" (my ex-boss has mentioned he's got some other plans in the not-too-distant future), so staying in their good books is kind of important to me. However, it appears that it's now kind of important to my ex-boss that I look bad. And I think I can guess why. I'd imagine that people probably started complaining that stuff wasn't being done, and things weren't working, and that Justin could have fixed it without a problem. How do you combat this? Start blaming Justin for things that go wrong. People can't very well say "if only Justin was here" if Justin is the cause of untold catastrophe.

Anyway, to finish this, there's been a couple of times when as part of my current job I've had to look in to error logs, etc. on a couple of my old workplace's servers, and there are things that are deteriorating that aren't being dealt with. If I was there, I would have noticed (because I do things like check error logs regularly) and dealt with them. But I'm not. And so what will happen is that at some point the wheels will fall off one of these deteriorating things, and then they'll blame me for it falling over, and pay some consultant hundreds of dollars an hour to fix it. The question is, what can I do to prevent myself from becoming my ex-boss's new blame-body? His old one was the previous IT manager, who although he's less competent then he perhaps should have been, is nowhere near the vile, evil, moneywasting, unplanning monster that my ex-boss made him out to be on a regular basis. So I guess I just have to hope that at least some people remember that I poured my heart and soul into making the IT at my old job as workable and stable and excellent as I possibly could. Then maybe I can work there again someday.

Oh, and Meg - if you're reading: I know this is probably a non-issue, but just because I know you know all the people involved, it's probably best if you don't mention my angsty ramblings to them. I considered speaking to them directly, but it could affect my new employer's business relationship with my old employer as a result, and it's very much a personal issue. Not wanting to cause trouble. Thanks for understanding. :)

1 comment:

Nathan Zamprogno said...

When you were at your previous employers, I can understand that there was a powerful motivation for them not to be too aware of your blog, seeing as you referred to certain characters, if not by name, then at least in such a way as someone could have put two and two together without too much effort. But do you really have that much to lose if they happen upon it now? Maybe there's no recrimination for you now, and your previous postings can stand as a kind of answer to any of the bad press that's going about now. You're not there to answer the "everything is Justin's fault" argument, and you can hardly speak now to answer the charge, for fear of damaging your relationship with a client, so what can you do?

Speak in the past, through your blog.