suffer well

…of information from the Appellate Division of my state’s Employment Security Commission. I had great fun looking through it, because it contains all the documentation that my former employer is using as the basis of their appeal, and I gotta tell ya, it looks pretty flimsy to me.

To refresh everyone’s memory, I was terminated from my caseworker position with my state’s child protective services agency in June for “insubordination” for supposedly disobeying a direct order from a supervisor, and “conduct unbecoming a public employee” for supposedly being rude to coworkers, clients, and foster parents. I maintain that in the case involved regarding the insubordination, I was not given a direct order, I was given a suggestion, and when I reached a different conclusion than the supervisor, suddenly the suggestion became a direct order and I was in hot water. Nonetheless, I apologized and did what I was told to do from that point forward. Regarding the supposed poor working relationships, my story is that I had excellent and friendly working relationships with coworkers, and respectful and professional relationships with clients and foster parents and that at no time were any issues ever addressed with me about how I spoke to the people I worked with.

Their documentation of the alleged “insubordination” consists of internal emails from my former supervisor to the county director in which she states she warned me in a monthly conference I could be terminated for for failing to obey the backup supervisor’s direct order while she, my real supervisor, was at training. This is a COMPLETE, UNADULTERATED FABRICATION. During the conference, I was the one who asked if I needed to be worried about my job, since I had misinterpreted the so-called “direct order” from the backup supervisor as a suggestion, and was told by my actual supervisor, “Of course not. You’re a great worker. You’re brand new and you made a mistake, but we fixed it up fine. Don’t worry about a thing.” But short of a taped record of the conference (which does not exist), it’s going to come down to “he said, she said”.

Their documentation of the alleged “behavior unbecoming a public employee ” also consists of internal emails from the county director to a higher-up at the state office. The email states that she had received complaints from 1) Family Support Supervisors who told them that Foster Parents had reported I was rude (our Foster Parents don’t work with the Family Support Division, they work with the Child Welfare Division – so this story makes no sense), 2) an APS supervisor who took a complaint from a client regarding me talking down to her (our office had no APS supervisor), 3) Co-workers in my office who said I was rude and abrupt with them (no names, no dates, no statements from the coworkers, and no evidence this was addressed with me), 4) The backup supervisor whose direct order I misinterpreted that when our counties had joint training, I refused to speak to him (the relationship was tense over the issue, however, I wasn’t aware that failure to greet someone was a fire-able offense), and 5) a counselor with a local agency who said I was rude and that our joint clients didn’t want me as their caseworker anymore (I told my supervisor directly that I was speaking very bluntly to these clients, who are older adolescents, about their mother’s drug use and that her choices were preventing them from being reunified, and she assured me this was fine and that they needed to hear the truth and lay the blame where it belonged, which is with their mother, not with me). This, too, is going to come down to “he said, she said.” I will state that nothing was ever addressed with me, and that if there were problems they were discussed over and above my head and without my knowledge. They will say I was talked with about my behavior. I will say that my behavior was occasionally corrected, but I was specifically told my job was in no danger and that I was a great worker. They will say I was a probationary employee and they didn’t need to warn me of shit. I’ll cry foul and share my opinion that this may indeed be how policy reads, but it certainly isn’t fair or ethical. And then, in all likelihood, I will lose my benefits because it will be the State versus the single mom who just needs her $234 a week to pay some lousy bills while she looks for another job.

As Eileen would say, “Feh!”