The first duty is to the truth.
Sep 19
Most of the time my blog is about fun and tech and gadgets and stuff, and sometimes its about serious things. Like today, Knightwise.Com takes up one of the roles it is also meant to preform : My public Forum. One of the reasons for that is a rumor that is circulated by my former employer about the reason for my departure at my previous company. Because the truth , my honor and my reputation are VERY important to me, Knightwise.com becomes the place where I’ll give you the correct version of the facts. To protect the innocent (and not so innocent) and the general rule ‘never to blog about work’ , names and locations have been left out.
The story.
About nine months ago, I started working for a small consultancy firm in the north of our province, to fill a position in IT Support.The job gave me the opportunity to for fill an ambition of supporting small to medium size businesses when in came to IT. Going down to clients (small businesses) and fixing their IT problems was a wonderful task. Listening to clients, trying to understand what it is they did for a living and how "technology could work for them’ was a very challenging and rewarding job. All my different talents, From tech to sales to listening to people where tapped and I found myself driving happily to work every single day. At the company things also proved very interesting: there where places for my ideas in working with open source software and a month after starting to work on the internal IT infrastructure, I had Linux servers up and running and was promoting and pushing out open source software.
Because I had quite a lot on my tray ( Developing an open source server project for our clients, training trainee’s, doing sales, being the local sys-admin) there was not much room left for marketing. So the growth of the client base was slow, but steady. Our clients where happy with the service we provided and had faith that we could help them out when they had a problem or a question.
All that changed two months ago, On a Friday morning (the last day before my holiday) management informed me that they would be shutting down my department. IT-support for their customers would be curtailed and I was to report to a client in Brussels for a four-month consultancy assignment. Never mind the fact that profile that was required did not meet my technical skills, as long as I just did it, I would be bringing in cash. But filling in a position for which is was not qualified and having to preform a two hour commute EVERY DAY (4 hours in total) was not my idea of a good time. The first loyalty of a person is to the truth : The truth was : I was not qualified for this job, nor would I be able to give the customer ‘value for money’ and do my job right.
During my vacation I had time to ponder over my professional future and decided it was time to move on. I looked around and quickly found a new opportunity, thus upon returning I reported that I would be leaving because I had come to work with small business clients, and that the consultancy gig in Brussels was not something I saw as something I wanted to do. If they where terminating the ‘small business support’ branch, I did not want to be a burden and would look for a professional future elsewhere. The reaction I got was that they were far from pleased but had no other choice then to accept my decision. I gave them my word that I would do my very best right up untill the last day, so I took care of the business as they boss went on holiday, trained my successor, made sure all the systems where running smoothly and so on. In all : I did what I should do : Do ones best and make sure that the clients would not suffer from the fact that I would be leaving.
So on my last day I handed over my keys, patted my little servers and told them to behave and gave my successor a good firm handshake (and my Cellphone) should he ever need anything. Unfortunately I did not get a chance to say goodbye to the customers but .. I signed off with honors.
At least .. that is what I thought. Yesterday I found out that my former employer is telling a different story. According to them I was "Kicked out because I fiddled around with my Timesheet*" (* the sheet where we fill in the hours we work every day). I am a very calm person but boy was I mad ! I’m very disappointed upon hearing this statement that is far from the truth AND is smear on my reputation and good name. For me : Thats important. My reputation , the way people and clients perceive me and my "good professional reputation" are one the fruits of the hard work I put in. I do my job well, put my soul into it and do everything as good as I can. I’m honorable and loyal and am not the scamming slacking kind. My work is "what I do" . How i do my work is "who I am" My professional reputation is a combination of both. And I have a spotless record when it comes to that.
Am i mad , pissed of about the slander ? No not realy. I think its small and immature. BUT my fist duty IS to the truth .. and here you have the whole story.
