Signing off on the news

I’ve become quite settled in my jobless routine. Which is why it was so unsettling to read in the national news about problems at a sister corporation to my former employer. The problem is related to some of the things I once had some peripheral input to, and it’s a big enough fiasco that my former employer has been dragged into it as well. It would seem that I am unable to consider myself divorced-and-insulated from that place – my first thoughts were, “Can they drag me into this mess?”.

Years ago I was coerced into signing a statement approving a certain method of doing things. When I indicated I had some reservations about the process in question, my boss stated that if I failed to sign I “would not be able to consider my employment with the company secure.” I signed.

A couple of years ago, the same statement resurfaced, and the new person now in charge of the department asked me to sign again. I knew better than to revoice my objections, but I made it clear that I resented being coerced into signing something that I didn’t necessarily believe in when they knew I had no choice but to sign because my medical problems demanded I have health insurance.

Last year a company vice president was conducting personal interviews with all of us who were involved in a sensitive area of the company after some problems arose. During my interview, the question of coercion came up, and I told him what had happened to me. The VP seemed astounded to hear this, but also seemed to believe me. I never heard anything after that conversation though, and assumed that if anything were to be done about it, it was being done behind the scenes.

So I get laid off in August (which turns out to be mere weeks after the problem surfaced at the sister company), and now we have problems at the sister company in the national news. Two letters are floating around out there somewhere with my name affixed to them attesting to the validity of the system that led to some of the problems now garnering national news. While I can’t believe they’d really drag me into it, a little corner of my mind warns me that the easiest way for a company to cover its butt is to blame a former employee no longer connected with them, an employee conveniently let go weeks after the problem first surface.

Fortunately I reported the coercion to the lawyer I retained to review my severance package. It’s on independent record that I signed under protest. This makes me feel no better about the potential of being dragged into this mess unwillingly. Since I know that most of this is simply the product of my paranoid mind, I’m trying not to think about it, knowing that eventually it will just go away.

In related news, I’ve been approached by a large auditing company to do third party audits on my specialty. This would use all my education and certifications, get me additional certification, and probably garner a significantly larger paycheck than I had been getting. It also means I’d be on the road about 75% of the time. We’ve exchanged a few emails, but I’ve hesitated about calling their contact and setting up a real interview. I’m not sure I want to be on the road most of the time, and I’m certainly not sure I want to stay in this business at all after this week’s news.

In all honesty, I feel like the last ten years of my professional life have been a waste, and I’m not entirely sure how to reinvent myself this time. I’m getting too old for this nonsense.