So my boss has a pet project, his ex-boyfriend, a man in his 40s who has spent time in jail, can’t hold down a job, etc., etc. My boss S has taken on this man G as his personal project, even though they haven’t been together for many years.
When G had nowhere to live and no job, S took him in and let him sleep on his couch (for years now). For a while, G’s new bf lived there too. (Now he’s in jail for robbing banks though.) When S bought a new car, he gave his old one to G. When G kept losing his job because he couldn’t show up to work on time, S paid him to “maintain the building”. Eventually he got a title, “Operations Manager”, and a regular job helping out in the office part time. He got to work whenever he wanted, wear whatever he wanted, bring whomever he wanted into the office… well, you get the drift. Whatever policies there are, G is exempt.
I won’t bore you with the details but G has moved up the food chain. Now he has a position of some responsibility. Things are going down the toilet at a rapid rate… but there’s no point in saying anything to S, nothing’s ever done about it. Policies are applied randomly here and there, but G is untouchable. He’s unprofessional and terrible at the job, but it doesn’t seem to matter. I and my colleague have to work extra hard catching and fixing his mistakes and taking over responsibilities he can’t handle, but if we complain, we are the ones who are bad at our jobs and can’t handle workloads we clearly should be able to handle.
Now I find out that G has given a student some potentially bad immigration advice. This could reflect badly on us in so many ways. It could be really serious. It could also result in the student getting in trouble with immigration, maybe even losing his visa which he needs for his job as a pilot. This mistake may be repeated with several of this student’s friends.
Now I have talked to G about this and he swears that the last Registrar told him what to do. (She no longer works here because she had a breakdown… Hmmmmm…) It’s not my job to know anything about immigration but I’ve been around the block and I feel like this is not right. Part of me wants to see this come back to us. I want to see G cause serious problems for the company so he will have to be removed. But I don’t want these students to have negative consequences because of it, maybe even losing their livelihood, because we told them something that wasn’t true.
I’m not sure how G dealt with the situation – either he generated a false letter, a lie, or he generated a letter that could cause the student significant problems if he ever produced it at the border.
On one hand, it’s none of my business. On the other hand, it’s wrong of me not to interfere.
I’m just tired of getting in trouble for trying to do things right here. For trying to give quality and ethical service, like we used to.
Fiction? Oh, this isn’t fiction. I wish it was. This story is true. Like so many other unbelievable stories from my workplace. I just need out.
And I miss Joey right now. Joey, you gave me such good advice before, I wish you were here to at least listen and say you understand that I am unable to be effective because S is bad at his job. JOEEEEEEYYYYYYYYY come back!
