An ex employer with a grudge - what would you do?

In My Humble Opinion
1

This is a long story, and the problem is of my own making, but I’m looking for some advice about how to deal with an ex employer who is trying to wreck my new girlfriend’s job.

About 18 months ago I (stupidly, you don’t need to tell me) started an affair with a client (a very important client). I won’t go into the drawn out story, but suffice to say, my employers were very unhappy about it, naturally, and at the start of this year I took the decision to leave my job and make a proper go of it with my - now-ex- client. Our relationship is going well.

Now my employment contract states that I can’t steal away any client business for six months after the end of my employment - and I haven’t. However, my ex employers have been extremely paranoid that I would, and have sent my successively nasty letters telling me they’d sue me if I did. I haven’t, and have told them so. In fact, when I left, I said that I was keen for my relationship with my now-girlfriend to be personal from now on and NOT professional, and there was no reason why they shouldn’t retain her business.

This clearly wasn’t enough for them and so last month they held a meeting with one of the senior partners in my girlfriend’s firm, told then what had happened, and said they didn’t want my girlfriend giving me their business out of nepotism. Clearly my girlfriend was furious, but decided to let it drop.

Now it just so happens that my girlfriend has put the contract out to pitch - the firm has a new management team starting in October and want ALL their supplier contracts reviewed, so this is nothing out of the blue. My girlfriend has done everything above board, included my ex employers on the pitch list despite their stab in the back, and they have submitted their round 1 tender along with 9 other agencies.

In a straightforward scoring system, my old employers actually failed to make the shortlist, but my girlfriend has bent the rules to allow the into the next round of pitching. However, the managing partner of the firm has today received a letter from them stating that they don’t want to pitch, that the events of the last year have exhausted and compromised them, and they don’t think it’s a level playing field. He wants to know what the fuck has been going on.

My girlfriend’s first reaction is to storm round their office and ask them why the fuck they’re trying to wreck her career. She hasn’t done so. But she’s need to do something.

Should she tell her boss - the boss of bosses - about her and me? How can she contain my ex employers who seem determined to ‘out’ us to the world at large.

This is so tiring and so upsetting. Six months later and we STILL can’t find peace. All we did was fall in love.

2

My advice would be to behave in a business-like fashion.

Both you and your girl-friend are professionals who wish to do well in your careers. If she did ‘storm round their office and ask them why the fuck they’re trying to wreck her career’, then that gossip would go right round your industry and make it hard for her to get future work.

I realise that you are both fed up and that your previous firm is probably trying to provoke you. However the best future outcome is if you remain serious professionals and let them mess up their reputations. (‘Firm A are still annoyed about a situation that happened months ago!’)

Good luck … and find your girl-friend a stress-busting activity. :slight_smile:

3

I agree with you completely - and that’s what we’ve been trying to do, by so far taking their jibes in the chin and trying to get on with our lives. The problem now is that they’re getting out of hand. My girlfriend has a very good job that she really can’t afford to lose and she doesn’t want what happened between us to spread round her entire company - her team are in blissful ignorance, for example, and she’d really like to keep it that way, but my ex employers seem bent on revenge. How do we contain the damage?

4

SanVito, I’m a little confused. You left your job with the now-vindictive employer. (For reasons that seem pretty defensible - and call me a hopeless romantic, but if the GF is really the right relationship for you, you were right to go for it.) So what are you now doing? Working independently? Or have you been hired by a firm that competes with the previous employer?

It seems like a given that you will not do business with your girlfriend’s company. That’s the case, correct? So why does your former employer have a bug up their collective ass?

5

If this were me – I would go to the boss of bosses and explain that "well, you see, bid A is angry because one of their employees quit working for them 6 months ago to start dating me, so as not to break any ethics rules. They cannot understand that SanVito is not interested in our contract as he sees a professional problem with working for a love-interest, and they are just trying to cause problems in general because he chose to quit rather than play their game of using our relationship to keep our contract. I am sorry that my personal life has affected work as it has, but in all honesty, it was completely unexpected from people who are supposed to be “above-board” and “professional.”

Not technically the truth, but not technically a lie, either. In all honesty, the part about your ex-company wanting to use your relationship with the client to keep the client’s business is what it sounds like the problem is. FWIW, IANAL and all that, but I did work for one who insisted on non-competes with all of his employees (it was a side business that he had, nothing to do with legal stuff) and he once confided in me that non-competes are generally not worth the paper they’re printed on and are usually overturned in court. Especially since you mentioned that it’s past the 6 month mark, I would consider talking to my own lawyer about a possible harassment suit against ex-employer.

This has all been what I would do and in no way is legal or even really probably good advice. disclaimer and all that.

6

take the high road and be professional. note: in my book you’re 2 strikes already. 1. a client affair that went on too long or coulld have been handled better and 2. putting them on the short list.

no offense meant, but both of the above are less than professional and would cause a disinterested bystander to say something is wrong. colleagues would laugh it off or sharpen knives. guessing you’re both relatively young junior, and scared this will bite your girlfriend in the ass.

if your girlfriend has a mentor in the firm - go ask that person for advice.

second, stick to the facts and only the facts. no editorializing, spin, acting like an innocent bystander or over compensation. “full disclosure, got involved, which is a bad idea, but turned serious & he left the firm. objectively, that firm should not have made the short list. i felt bad owing to this situation and that they were the incumbent. boy did i learn what not to do again.”

be very careful your girllfriend does not act like an innocent bystander. she’s not. HER dubious actions have the potential to cause issues with the corporate borg.

7

Please. That is not all you did. You both behaved unethically toward your former employer and your girlfriend’s current employer. Your girlfriend is continuing to do so to her current employer.

Your former employer is right to be behaving as they are. There is something hinky still going on.

Your girlfriend needs to find another job, or to man up and go tell her bosses what has been and is going on – and she needs to recuse herself from having anything to do with your former employer and that contract.

You know full well you created this mess; you just want to escape the bad consequences of your own choices. Unfortunately, life isn’t working out that way, is it?

8

I agree with China Guy. As innocent as this all is, you both work in an industry [I am guessing] who takes non-compete laws quite seriously.

If your girlfriend is working for Big Company X and she put your ex-employers on a short list for bids just because of their relationship to you [even though you no longer work for them] that may be a violation of ethics laws or at very least not a good decision on her part.

Being open an communicative with Big Boss of your GF’s company does not seem like the right thing to do either. It’s non of his business as you do not work for a competitor or vendor anymore. Is that right? Do you work for a competitor or vendor of your GF’s company? If so then that may cause problems.

This seems like a sticky mess, but if you are not working for a competitor or vendor of your gfs company you should be fine.

9

Working independently. I’m in no position to take my girlfriend’s account away from my previous employee - she requires a full service design agency

Correct. But they’re paranoid and don’t believe me.

10

I have no arguments with your first point - we both know what we did was wrong, but it’s done. However, I don’t get your second point - she put the agency on her short list DESPITE what’s happened, not because of it. She wanted to put things behind her and give them a clear chance to win the contract - and was fully prepared for an independent panel to pick them.

Sadly we’re both far from junior, which is why my ex-employees think I have the capability to steal their business. You really don’t need to say we should’ve known better. Boy do we know it.

11

There in’t anything hinky going on. She’s not behaving unethically (anymore). As I said above, she kept them on the shortlist because, as the incumbent, it would have been the normal thing to do. To NOT do so would’ve been ‘hinky’ (in our profession at least).

Yes we created it. But for the last six months we’ve been trying to move on and do the right thing. Seems some people don’t want us to.

12

As I said, she put them on the shortlist ‘despite’ our relationship and the problems that has caused, not ‘because’ of it.

13

I think some other posters might be misunderstanding what a “short list” is – believe it or not, but it is not the same thing as a “shit list”

14

I don’t see how your old firm has any basis to complain. Yes, you had an affair with a client, but you ended up leaving the firm and have done nothing to either cost your old firm the business or to capitalize on your relationship. Putting the company’s name on the shortlist might technically be an issue, but it’s understandable under the circumstances.

I’m a little confused though. You say that your old firm told your girlfriend’s firm about your relationship, but your girlfriend’s boss doesn’t know about it.

I’d have your girlfriend talk to her boss. Say that she’s dating a former member of the firm that’s complaining, and that they’re afraid she might be biased. She should offer not take part in awarding contracts where your old firm is bidding and stress that you will not be allowed to bid on contracts that compete with your old firm (for six month, at least).

She probably doesn’t have to mention that the relationship began before you left the firm, but if asked, she should admit it. Eventually, her boss is going to find out anyway. It’s not a crime to start dating a client; it only becomes an ethical problem if someone benefits monetarily from it.

Also, I get the impression that your previous firm provides a service to your girlfriend’s firm for a fee. If they don’t want a chance to earn that fee, that’s their decision. In this case, they’re pre-emptively taking their ball and going home. If they don’t want to play, then that’s their problem.

15

Yes there is.

  1. She is still involved with the contract after you two had started an improper relationship.

  2. She has not told her current employer about the improper relationship that you had, which affected the contract she is managing.

  3. She is actually making decisions on that contract based on the improper relationship she had with you.

She should never have been involved with the re-bidding process once you two got involved. Even once you had left your former employer. She certainly should not have put your former employer on the “short list” because of your past, improper relationship.

Once her company’s lawyers find out about all this, they will go bananas. Your former employer seems well aware that your girlfriend has not 'fessed up to what is going on. If her current employer finds out – watch out.

She needs to confess and extricate herself from this situation, now. The longer she plays cover-up, the worse it is going to be. Particularly given that she has acted improperly, again.

Frankly, the way I forsee it going down is:

  1. Your ex-employer complains to someone in her company about the bid process.
  2. Someone in her company looks into the bid process and finds out that your ex-employer didn’t meet the criteria for round two, but somehow got in, anyway.
  3. Whole sordid mess comes out.
  4. Girlfriend is lucky if she still has a job.

She is not doing the right thing. Doing the right thing would be going to her employer, telling them what went on, and accepting the consequences. What she is doing is hoping it all goes away.

16

There are three senior partners in the firm, one of which is the outgoing managing partner (boss of bosses). my ex employees told one of the other senior partners, on the basis that they were afraid of bias in giving me the business (which was never the intention, but by the by). He had a quiet word with my girlfriend, told her that her personal life was none of his business but that she just needed to make sure she was fair and above board in any work she awards - which she has been. The pitch process she’s going through is water tight, and the decision to put my old firm on the shortlist even though, on paper, they didn’t make the grade was a joint decision between her and her direct boss (the senior partner who knows about ‘us’) - a decision made purely on the basis of them being the incumbent agency with a long relationship with the firm…

17

But I’m not. It’s why I left fercrissakes.

You’re not listening. She’s not. If I’d never existed, my old agency would have got the pass onto the shortlist. If she was making decisions based on our relationship, my old agency wouldn’t been asked to tender for the contract at all.

18

I have to go with Lightray, if not as vigorously.

Your girlfriend has a potential conflict of interest. I’m sure she’s quite capable of putting her personal life out of the process and behaving completely professionally, but clearly, your former employer doesn’t agree.

The only responsible thing to do is for your GF to come clean with the managing partner – and by “come clean” I mean when your relationship started, why you left the company, what pieces of business might be affected, etc.

It’s her boss’ responsibility (and duty, for that matter) to determine what may or may not constitute a conflict. If her supervisor has already discussed it with the managing partner, then she has nothing to worry about.

19

That is NOT what you said at all.

That says that she bent the rules for your old employer; the implication is she’s bending over backwards to make sure they don’t get pissed at being cut out (and blame it on your relationship). Even though the fault would be the scoring system and not the relationship, the fact she bent the rules shows she’s only doing so because of your damn relationship.

20

But you’re not the only one in question here. Your girlfriend shouldn’t be involved in this bidding process anymore. Whatever she does there’s the impression of a conflict of interest.

You’re not listening. She’s taking actions that she wouldn’t have taken if she weren’t trying to bend over backwards to make things appear fair. This is exactly why she shouldn’t be on this project anymore - she’s got baggage that is very unprofessional. Her bosses shouldn’t accept this type of manipulation. If it was an uninterested employee your old company never would have made the short list. That is what should have happened but didn’t. That’s unprofessional.