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

["Brian G. Reynolds" <brian.g.reynolds@xxxxxxx>]

........sorry, very long........


Got home from work tonight to find a letter from work headed with the words
"Final Written Warning....

So I suppose that is where we are going?

It reads...

"Further to the Disciplinary Hearing which took place on 29th July, I
am writing to inform you that the decision has been taken to issue you with
a final written warning in respect of your failure to follow lawful and
reasonable instructions from senior staff on 21st July 2003.

At the Disciplinary Hearing, we discussed the misconduct. We asked you if
you were prepared to give an undertaking to comply with lawful and safe
instructions from superiors in the future. Your response was that you would
only follow instructions if you thought that they were right. As explained
to you at the hearing, this is not acceptable.

If there is no further misconduct of any nature committed over the next
twelve months, this warning will lapse. However, if there is a recurrence
of the same or similar offence or any other misconduct the Company will
have no option but to dismiss you from your employment."

It then goes on about appeal rights.

This brings me to a few questions, if this meeting was a Disciplinary
Hearing should there have been present someone taking notes of what was
being said? who is "we"?

I did ask another staff member to be present as I do not trust this
Director, but she was a silent witness.

I also asked in a previous email what form the meeting would take and what
was the subject, i.e. about the bonding or the telling him to bugger off. I
never got an answer.

Also should there have been another senior staff member present?

Today I wrote a number of letters to hand to the company owner detailing
this incident and the other "complaints" made at me when I was
not even at the site of the alleged incident's as I think I mentioned in
another email. Unfortunately the boss left for a meeting so I will have to
catch him in the morning.

One of the letters asked for detailed company ASD procedures and detail the
equipment to be used and its location, obviously I know the answer, no
procedures and no equipment! just want it in writing...

I think you are all right, now is the time to seek legal advice.

Also as this is the "Final Written Warning" does that not
indicate there is a previous written warning somewhere?

Last August I was working for a lady contractor on a site in Milton-Keynes
performing a "10 minute" (sound familiar?) install on a whole
bunch of PC's, when I came to start the job the install failed and on
investigation I found out the permanent staff had installed the wrong
version of Oracle onto these PC's, so a 10 minute job became 30 minutes+
per PC as I had to un-install Oracle and install a new version and then
install and set-up Business Objects.

I was told by the contractor that if I have any problems I was to report
them to her and she would report to the section head and carry on with the
next PC, which I did.

I had 2 days to finish this job but knew there was no chance so I opted to
work through the day with no breaks and work on as many PC's as I could get
my hands on, not very easy as anyone of you will know that have done this,
and left the site late on the first day and stayed till the job was
finished on the following day which was gone 20:00hrs!, bearing in mind we
do not get paid overtime!

The following day back in our office I was expecting a pat on the back for
my effort but all I got was a complaint.....

They said I was too slow and was not the right man for the job as I could
not sort out the Oracle problems! I was furious! I explained at a hearing
in our office with the same Director and our Technical Director that I was
not allowed to fix the Oracle issues, despite I actually knew the fixes. I
explained that Oracle was the wrong  version but my company would not let
me ask the staff member to ascertain what actually happened and my company
expressly forbade me from making contact with the staff member, they said
we make too much money from them so just put up with it and banned me from
ever working on that site again! I could not do that and made it clear when
I was next over there I would pay a visit to the staff head and ask her if
she had been told the full story about Oracle and she said she had not! I
was then recalled back to the office and told after I left her she went
straight to the internal IT staff and said I had called them shit! there is
absolutely no way I swear in front of women and I do n
ot think any of their IT staff are shit! I actually got on with them very
well and had done for the past 4 years of working on that site!

I ended up getting a formal written warning for going behind the company's
back despite me asking them to arrange a meeting so this could be sorted
out, I even said I would have absolutely no problem apologising to the
staff if they thought I was not good enough, hell the staff member even
said to my face as we were leaving after 20:00hrs how pleased she was with
my workmanship! my company also decided to let them have the days for
free!!!!

I was not at all happy.....

So I suppose this constitutes the first warning?

I am going to bed not to cry, I may be back but I might also kill someone!

Sorry for this being long but I feel you need to know what is happening, as
much as I know that is!

B.