I am an insurance agent in New York. I don’t really like my job but it pays a ton of money so I accept it for what it is and continue to keep looking for something better to come along. Up until about a week ago when I got written up I wasn’t actively searching for other work, just kind of watching in case that job that was designed specifically for me fell into my lap. I do my job well, or at least I thought I did. At my job I have many responsibilities, one of which is ordering appraisals for high value properties that we insure. 3 times in the past 2 months I have had my supervisor come to me with a list of policies for which I ordered appraisals and tell me there was nothing in the system, no record of the work I had done and now I had to go in and redo all of the orders. After the second time I was put on a written warning because the appraisal process is so important to what we do and if I keep screwing up large batches of orders we won’t be charging correct premiums to those customers, etc.
Well today was the 3rd list I was given of work that I had done that no one could find. I almost started crying because I just knew this meant I was going to get fired. Like, escorted out of the building with my stuff in a grocery bag kind of fired. So I went into the system and searched and didn’t find anything. There was no record of my work. That is, until I started searching for appraisals that had been suspended or cancelled. Then about half of these appraisals showed up on the list. I kept looking and found others tucked in incorrect folders and places where no one would ever think to look for them and they wouldn’t show up in the search function.
I really don’t think this is an error on my part since I do this every day and have done this every day for 6 months and only recently have I been having work dissapear on me. I want to say it is a system error or something that is doing this because that would mean it would be easily fixed and I would never have to deal with it again. However I am leaning towards the notion that someone in the office is sabotaging my work and going in behind me to move and delete the appraisals to make me look stupid and incompetent. The only reason I would think that is because the appraisals were moved around to different areas, some suspended, some cancelled, kind of spread about in a way that I can’t imagine being the result of a bug in the system.
After pointing out the found appraisals to my boss she says she will look into it and see if she can find out why this happened, but now I don’t trust anyone in the office. I really don’t want to be here anymore and I am trying to convince myself that it isn’t an attack on me by anyone else and is just an error but this isn’t the only thing that makes me think I’m being sabotaged, just the biggest issue. The other things I have noticed though I have always attributed to other people being lazy or being jerks but now I am starting to wonder if maybe there isn’t more to it than that.
I am waiting for my boss to come back and let me know what she found in the appraisal system, but what do you think? Does it sound like something that isn’t to blame on anyone or does it sound more like something that would have to be done on purpose? And either way does it matter since I don’t really feel compelled to stay here and will continue to search for a new job?
I would probably think the same thing and it would make me very worried. Here’s a somewhat similar story.
At my current job, we just fired someone for “anger management” issues. She had it in for everyone, especially new people, thin and/or attractive women or anyone in a position higher than her.
I heard stories about how she would train someone wrong or leave a few important details out. After she left, the girl she trained a few months ago found a notebook full of things that the new girl was doing, right down to what she did on her lunch hour. I was as if she were taking notes to build a case to have her fired. She wasn’t the Alpha female anymore since someone younger and thinner and equally as talkative joined the staff and was always getting attention.
In your case, you may have someone there who is jealous of you or doesn’t like you. But I doubt it’s an office-wide thing. If it’s the boss who wants an excuse to fire you, THEN I would worry. For now, maybe your boss can find out who’s behind it and the person can be taken care of. IF indeed that’s what’s happening.
Hmmm - my paranoid self says you better grow eyes in the back of your head…My rational self says don’t worry about it, as you are looking for another job. Now in reality, if you truly do not want to stay there, and are acting as such someone may indeed want to get you out the door.
Are you acting in a manner that someone may suspect you want to leave?
Write ups are usually done before a firing to make sure they follow company protocol for letting you go. Liability stuff.
If you truly are leaving and soon, maybe you should simply follow up with your boss, make your digging around well known to people and do your work diligently until another job comes through.
I haven’t said a word to anyone that I am looking elsewhere except my roommate, and it isn’t like I am using monster.com on my work computer or anything. Heck, the resumes I have posted online are all private so I have to send them out and my company can’t stumble upon my job search while looking around online.
I honestly think I know who it is if it is, in fact, someone sabotaging me. I guess I am just going to have to start taking screen shots of my work and keeping copies of things in a folder in my locked desk drawer to cover myself because though I am looking I have only REALLY been looking for a week or so and I know it will take probably a month or more to find something else.
Is there a way that you can document your work? Sort of cc your boss, “I’m done with appraisal X, it’s in folder blah-de-blah?”
Is there a new employee there, new manager, etc? Is it possible the new employee is unaware that they’re doing anything wrong?
If you are ordering appraisals and they are cancelled, what does that mean? Can you figure out if anyone in particular is cancelling the appraisals?
I would also get your IS department involved…it could be a software bug. Stranger things have happened.
I would also have your boss watch you…“I’m done with this one…see, I’m putting it in folder blah-de-blah.” If it later moves, at least you have a witness that you’re not crazy.
I wouldn’t get paranoid yet, but I would be very diligent about documenting my work, telling my boss everything I’ve done, and getting the IS department involved until you get everything straightened out.
If their IT is any good, this should be doable; maybe they have an extremely-manual system, but most companies with more than 3 employees I’ve seen keep track of “who does what” with anything similar to a purchase order. So should be tracking who moved the folders. Unless it’s one of those companies where people share passwords all over the place, a practice that gives me rashes just to think of it but which you find in the most amazing locations (pharmaceutical companies that are otherwise completely paranoid, for example).
We have 1 username and password for the entire company under the appraisal ordering system. They only reason they know the reports that dissapeared were mine is because they were assigned to me and not someone else. I have complained about the username/password thing many times but no one listens.
Very odd. Take screen shots, but also make a handwritten log of everything you do. When you save an appraisal, write down the file name and location, and write down the date and time. Every now and then, go through and check that everything is where you left it.
Geez, that’s the kind of thing that would leave me trembling. Ugh!
I think ivylass’s suggestions are very good. I am a little curious why, if you are being sabatoged, the person didn’t delete or cancel all of them, rather than just move stuff around.
What a horrible situation. I say to believe your gut feelings. From what you’ve said you don’t feel comfortable there now (who would?), so if you can leave you probably should.
Ask yourself what your boss could say, after investigating, that would make everything all right. Anything?
I know your curiously will chew on this endlessly, but at the end of the day it’s probably enough to know that someone there has targeted you and even if this issue is cleared up there will probably be other issues and the bottom line is you do not feel safe.
Does your computer system assign document or record numbers when you submit these orders? Record them, in a spreadsheet that you keep on your own harddrive, or on a hardcopy file.
If someone is messing with your records in the database, even if it’s an IT person, unless it’s one of your alpha geeks, the database will know who did it (or at least under whose ID it was done) and when.
Also, scan your computer for keyloggers and spyware and then change all of your passwords to something very secure. Use lots of punctuation. In fact, if possible, go change your passwords on someone else’s computer.
That’s precisely why I think she might be being sabotaged – if everything was being treated in the same way, that would either be a) a bug or b) very obvious that something was happening. By moving things, suspending them, generally screwing them up in a variety of ways, it’s harder to recognize as a single problem, and easier to blame on the OP as a personal screwup.
EEEK! There’s things about which I’m willing to let my customers go whichever way they feel, but “let’s get only 50 users for the 300 employees and just share” isn’t one of them, I’m a bulldog about that.
It completely defeats the notion of an audit, you have no idea who was responsible for what and who actually did it!
I agree. I think it’s to show incompetance. If things were just deleted, it could either be, as you said, a bug or it could also be proof of a sabotage. If only one person’s work is being deleted, she would appear that someone was targeting her. I’m not sure I explained that right, but that’s the jist of it.
So this person has enough time on their hands to screw with your stuff?
See if you can set some sort of trap for them. Maybe mention in their hearing that you’ve FINALLY finished this horrible bitch of an appraisal, it took you hours, and you’re so glad it’s behind you.
I don’t know about illegal, but deliberately screwing with another employee’s work should be a firing offense. And since the employee is also having a negative impact on the employer’s efficiency…
The company just celebrated our 1 year anniversary on Wednesday, so they are still trying to work out the kinks in the system so to speak. As far as our company goes we are a reciprocal exchange, meaning that we are owned by the policy holders. There is no public to mention anything to unfortunately.