Re: RE: Help needed.....may loose job....

[Bruno Prior <bruno@xxxxxxx>]

Brian,

Did you receive a formal verbal or written warning for any of these
previous events (i.e. warning recorded on your personnel file)? Were the
proper procedures followed in those cases (minuted interview with
adequate notice and witness present)? If not, you effectively have a
clean sheet. In that case, they would have to demonstrate that this
latest event represented gross misconduct on your part if they wanted to
sack you. Sounds to me like it would be a real stretch for them to argue
that this was gross misconduct. Sounds to me like this guy hasn't done
his homework and doesn't have any experience with employment issues.
Although telling him to "bugger off" may not have been your
smartest move.

It's pretty difficult to demonstrate gross misconduct. To give you an
example: my company controls landfill gas for waste disposal companies.
It's a significant responsibility, as buildup of gas can lead to
migration with consequent risks of explosion, asphyxiation, and other
health and environmental risks. Mostly this runs itself, but our
engineers are under instructions to visit sites at least once a week to
make sure there's not a problem with the system. Despite this, two of
our engineers managed to ignore a site for 26 days, and the collection
system was off for 19 of those days, which could have been catastrophic.
One of those engineers had a history of not doing his job properly. But
because we hadn't followed formal procedures when disciplining him
previously we couldn't sack him for repeated failures. And legal advice
was that this incident did not represent gross misconduct on their part,
even though it goes to the heart of our responsibilities as a company.
If that wasn't gross misconduct, then I don't see how what you did can be.

Having said that, if I were you I would be keeping my eye open for
another job. They don't sound like the sort of company I would want to
work for. If you have a bad relationship with a vindictive boss who
wants you out, you're going to be very stressed making sure that
everything you do meets all the company's requirements so he doesn't
have an excuse to discipline you and eventually get rid of you. If you
had alternative employment options, it might work best for you and them
to agree a "redundancy" package and go your separate ways.

Cheers,

Bruno


Brian G. Reynolds wrote:
> We don't have a personnel department, but I did ask for a witness to
> just listen in.
>
> One thing that did come up during the "discussion" was some
time back
> I went to go through a fire door and found out the handle had busted
> and I could not open it. I went another way then propped the door
> open and reported it. Shortly later the handle was fixed, apparently
> not for the first time, but the same director wanted to know who had
> propped it open, I said I did and a row ensued.
>
> To explain the situation, there are a set of stairs with a fire door
> at the top and bottom with a fire escape, our back door, at the
> bottom of the stairs. My thoughts were, if the fire exit gets blocked
> I do not have an alternative exit as the fire door is not working,
> this I deemed to be unsafe, he did not like it and said I would be
> put on a formal warning if it happened again. This was mentioned by
> him to which I asked if this was what was this was really about?, he
> said no. I then informed him that the fire exit in sales was found
> locked one day last week and this is the very reason I believe I was
> right with my earlier decision....I wonder if sour grapes come to
> mind?
>
> There were 2 other instances over the past year or so of complaints
> made of me to our company, 1 saying I was rude to a lady user, it
> turned out I was not even on that site at the time! it was an
> internal IT person, I did not get an apology and did not get an
> answer how the complaint got directed to me in the first place! The
> next one was an internal IT person from the same site complained that
> I had just left the job and went for a drive! what I actually did do
> was unload the van at that site with new PC's, load old PC's, drive
> to another site to drop the old PC's off and then return and collect
> the new PC's. I had 2 co-workers with me at the time whom said I had
> told him what I was going to do and the lad in question said he did
> not complain about me, so how did that get back to my company?
>
> Are you seeing a pattern here?
>
> I did ask the director and the technical director at a complaints
> meeting I had to attend if there is some sort of vendetta against me,
> were they trying to get me to resign? they said of course not....
>
> I'm not convinced....
>
> I think the "major breach" comes from the fact this contract
is worth
> £4.2m to us so they are going OTT on everything...
>
> B.