HELP! - Contractor with a BIG Problem (employee, highest, collect)

[chris101]

Good Morning,

For the past 2.5 years I was contracting for a very well known company in the UK. I chose to contract after repeated attempts to make me permanent as it was the best option for me in terms of financing (Perm paid far less).

I was one of the senior engineers for the company, likeable to all staff from Directors to standard staff and my knowledge and experience was one that most who had worked or knew about me, agreed was one of the best in my field.

I was involved in many projects and the relationship I had with my manager was one that gave me flexibility to move around when and how I liked as long as the job got done - which till my last date, I never once failed to deliver.

However at the end of March from a one small meeting from my manager, he decided to let me off. He basically got rid of me in such a way that he didn't even inform me and made my agency do the dirty work.

This came to major surprise however after digging out the reasons, it seems it was on the basis of 1. Not logging onto a system enough in my final week, 2. Claiming too much over time and 3. A berevement that caused a mis-understanding.

I will elaborate on the 3 points -

1. In my last 1.5 years my role was to support staff members, in most of my given weeks there I would either do this remotely or make phone calls to contacts to resolve issues. If they did a search into my logging in history for 1.5 years there will see that on some given occasions I did not even log into a system as most of my work was done through emails and calls on the phone and support in person.

2. All my overtime had to be overseen by my line manager to approve first and then passed onto my agency. All my overtime had to have a reason for my line manager to approve, which I never had an issue with getting approved until this fatal day.

3. A member of the family passed away on the previous week and I informed a manager that I had borrowed IT kit from that I was unable to provide it for him due to a bereavement.

This was completely taken out of context. The kit borrowed was non urgent, non impacting and only required for storage.
The kit itself was borrowed in the first place as someone from the HQ messed up the order and subsequently I borrowed it off a managers stock.
The stock that I was going to collect would of been around 5pm or just after working hours. However the funeral itself was at 6 so I wouldn't of been able to do both and as I mentioned it was not an issue of impact, I didn't elaborate in my email.

The next day my manager gets an email from the stock manager asking when I would be returning to work and apparently my manager tried to call me but it went to voicemail (which he didn't leave) and I got missed call alerts the next day (delay of around 20hrs). However the next day I even met my manager at HQ but he didn't mention anything to me about the contact from storage and he seemed to be ok with me.


Going back to the meeting where they let me off, my manager combined points 1 and 3 and said to my agency that as he didn't inform anyone of his absence and not logging in, he had to get rid of me.

2.5 years and he didn't bother to do the job himself.
In this amount of time I had done huge favours for my manager till this day of the meeting from unplanned OOH's, supporting users that did not belong to me, covering for him in meetings etc

The relationship was such that he would always praise and 2 weeks before the meeting he even said he would find me a job once this whole project was completed.

* Speaking to a few collegue they have said it was down to budgeting issues and as I was the highest paid engineer, they think my date to go had been pre destined.
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So above is really the background to what happened and yes I understand as a contractor I don't have much legs, if any to stand on.

HOWEVER the issue is now to do with referencing.

I have been able to get a few personal references of some of the HEADs of functions in the company but with a direct employee reference from my line manager is now an issue.

My agency say they will simply provide dates of work and job title, that it.
The line manager who used to approve my timesheets/OT agreed I was hard done by on the phone and said he would speak to HR to try finding me a job else where and provide me a reference.

It's been 2 weeks and after a few calls and emails, it seems unlikely he will provide it.
Speaking to a colleague recently my main manager who made the decision to get rid of me is apparently making it an issue for the line manager to give me a reference, even though he told him he still will.

So the predicament is how do I go about providing references to potential employers and if I do not get a reference is there anything I can do, as I have been wronged and its impacting my future now.

[Kibbiekat]

You still have to list this as a previous employer, and they can be called to verify employment. That is different than using them as a reference. Do you have other people you can use as references? What about a coworker you worked well with at this company instead of a supervisor?

I recently had a bad experience ending contract work too. I won't use anyone from that place as a reference, but I never considered it a big problem. I have other people I use.

[jons_wifey]

Originally Posted by Kibbiekat

You still have to list this as a previous employer, and they can be called to verify employment. That is different than using them as a reference. Do you have other people you can use as references? What about a coworker you worked well with at this company instead of a supervisor?

I recently had a bad experience ending contract work too. I won't use anyone from that place as a reference, but I never considered it a big problem. I have other people I use.