Do you think this has anything to do with my lack of employment?

[Cora]

This is kind of a long story, but I will try to be as clear as possible while making it as short as possible. I understand this is rough times and all with the economy, but I can't help but wonder if this has a big influence on why I have been unemployed for over a year now.

 

My last place of employment was in Social Services at a retirement home. I worked directly under the head Social Worker and one of my jobs was to arrange the residents room changes whenever we had construction of the building going on. They were doing this big renovation and I was constantly moving residents around to different rooms temporarily until construction on their previous rooms were completed.

 

Well, there was this one resident who had been a resident there for years and years and has had the same room forever. She was not the least bit happy about moving. I explained to her that this was only temporary and that within a couple of weeks she would be getting her old room back. By moving to this new room she was also going to be gaining a new roommate. Her future new roommate was someone she did not get along with and she voiced this to me. I told her that we could try and find her a different roommate or either try to get her a room by herself if available. She said no no I don't want you to go through that hassle just on my account. I told her, you don't understand, it's no hassle at all and we are here to make YOU as comfortable as possible. This resident finally agreed to move, but was not happy at all. Anyway, I can't complete a room change without my direct supervisor's final approval so I went to her and explained the situation. I told my supervisor that this resident wasn't happy at all about moving, but still agreed. My supervisor basically said tough, we are running out of time and we don't have many rooms to place her in.....she's moving where we tell her she's moving.

 

So long story short the resident moved and ended up complaining to her family about it when they came to visit etc. The family got highly upset because the resident was upset and they ended up calling and complaining to corporate. It was just a huge mess! So one day my direct supervisor comes to me and tells me the Administrator wants to see me and my direct supervisor in his office ASAP. I ask her what about? She says she has no idea. I kind of think she did because they are really tight. Anyway, we are both in his office and he looks right at me and tells me that this is going to be a very uncomfortable meeting for me. At this point I knew I was pretty much in trouble. He explains to me how he is going to have to let me go because of that incident with the whole room change. I'm like wait a minute and I told him what had happened and how my direct supervisor still gave me the final approval to make the room change. My direct supervisor spoke up and told him that it was true, she did in fact give me approval. He still would not change his mind though and told me that he had spoken with the resident and that the resident told him she never agreed to move. Basically it came down to my word against hers which is why I don't understand why they don't have some kind of written agreement so this can be avoided. I know there had to be somthing else, but he was very vague and kept referring to that one incident. He basically told me to resign or he would let me go so I did.

 

The reason I thought something else may have been going on is because he had until the end of the week to contact the unemployment agency to tell them his side of the story as to why I was terminated/forced to resign. He never got in touch with them so they went with my story and I got paid. I never fully understood what went on. I can't be sure that when employers contact my previous supervisor that she is giving me a bad rap? I'm wondering even though I honestly don't understand what the hell I did wrong, if this could be a major influence on why I can't seem to get a job today? If it is, what should/could I do? I am getting desperate here and I know it is bad times with the economy, but I can't help but wonder if this really has something to do with it?

[griffinchicken53]

i don't have alot of knowledge on this topic. i was fired before, and had trouble finding a job after that. a guy i knew who also got fired from this place had a friend call pretending to be a potential employer and was calling for info. several questions were asked and all they'd say was NO COMMENT.

it could be possible, but i'm not sure how you'd go about finding out if they are giving you a bad reference. i also wonder if i am getting a bad rap about past things.

good luck to you...hopefully someone else can chime in with good useful advice and suggestions.

[bhweller]

they are going to say "no comment" because it is actually unethical and in some cases against the law to try to deny employment at another company. In some states even non-compete contracts are not valid, because they would prevent you from working for whoever would hire you. If someone is bad mouthing you and you could prove it, you could potentially have a successfull lawsuit against them. The problem is people talk informally and don't write things down or tape record all their conversations so you probably can't prove anything anyway.

 

So, what do you do ? You stop living in the past. We live in a high unemployment period, which means some people are not going to find jobs just like the ones they had. This happens in ever recession. I have been through this type of situation twice just in the past 9 years and I have had a lot of jobs. You have to stop being picky. You have to be willing to take a job doing something you have never done before. You have to realize that your personality is probably what got you fired, and not your job performance, and just accept that. I have very rarely seen anyone get fired because they just sucked at their job, on the contrary I have seen genius people fired because there was no way they could fit in socially.

[bhweller]

My advice to everyone who just a regular working person is to downsize your expenses as much as possible, and get the lowest stress job you can, don't worry about power, prestige, or even maximizing income. We are in turbulent times and the main thing is to stay physically and mentally healthy and maybe learn a new trade. Even if I was really rich, I would probably just cash everything in and move to a desert island for a year ( and that is probably why I am not really rich, lol )