I may be getting fired??

Thank you @seesaw.

Well you do pose good questions. The fact that I had a great annual review that was seven pages long documenting how I am a good employee, and the fact that my boss’s boss told me directly that I’m a huge asset to the team, kind of says it all right? And that happened only just two weeks ago, before I backed out of social.

This (I think) has much more to do with me backing out of social (due to my anxiety), and much more to do with my boss disliking that.

The CEO told me it has to do with their bottom line. Without social on my plate, I carry the lightest load of SEO clients. My boss made it seem like I couldn’t handle more clients. He erroneously conveyed that to the CEO. So I cleared that point up.

Then the CEO also made the point of saying they need the right people in the right positions and pointed out that I had said to my boss that I had lost my passion for the field I’m in. So I cleared up that point as well.

I believe it’s my boss who is trying to get me fired by saying these things to the CEO.

So from what I can surmise, it has to do with my level of interest and my ability to take on more clients. I made it clear to the CEO where my passion DOES lie within my field, AND told him I can certainly take on more clients. I also let HR know this because my boss gave her this impression as well.

I’ve pissed off my boss, so I believe he wants me gone. I did not ask to be placed in charge of social strategy... my boss dumped that responsibility on me. It became too much, and I told my boss it was giving me too much anxiety and that I was in over my head. The CEO is the one who hired me, and he said he likes me A LOT.

So this is the CEO’s decision.

I may have rocked the boat in a few ways, but I get along with everyone in the company and there are no open conflicts or anything of the like. I went to HR about our work process once, that pissed off my boss, and I defended my right to present my own work with a colleague who tried to steal my thunder.

Hope this helps clear up any missing pieces... I am certainly willing to look at myself and see how I can do better, but honestly, I feel this is ALL on my boss who is misrepresenting the facts to our CEO.

Thankfully, it's the CEO who hired me, and not my boss.

Thanks, yes I had a final round of interviews with a large company last week. I am definitely looking.

Thank you!! Next time I speak with the CEO I will definitely defend myself if need be.

Yeah, definitely capitalize on that relationship with the CEO until you can jump ship for good.

Sorry if I misunderstood.

No worries... I realize that I haven't presented ALL the facts and info..... I gave just pieces of the whole story.

And yes, the CEO said it twice in this meeting that he really likes me.... I also told him, I really just want to capitalize upon my strengths in my field.

My experience and what I have read elsewhere is that this kind of situation is not about what you or anyone else 'deserves'.

HR is there to protect the company, not to protect any individual employee.

Also it helps to clarify in your own mind what is your primary goal right now and act accordingly. If it is to keep your job until you find another one, or if it is to convince your CEO that you are in the right and your boss is in the wrong... or something else. Those are all very different goals and have different demands.

Thanks for pointing that out, but you have this wrong.

This is not about me being in the right and trying to convince the CEO that I am right and my boss is wrong.

This is about me standing up for myself when my boss has misconstrued information to the CEO about what I have said. My boss is trying to get me fired by basically lying to the CEO.... so I have to defend myself in front of the CEO and point out that things I've said are being misconstrued. That's what's going on here.

And I am sure as hell going to defend myself in order to save my job.

In my 7-page annual review, given to me two weeks ago, it states:

-I am reliable employee
-I produce HIGH quality work
-NONE of my work needs correction OR oversight -- every deliverable sent to each client is error-free
-I have been highly successful in retaining ALL of my clients -- none have left
-I have achieved great results for my clients
-I willingly mentor junior staff and am a strong team player
-I take initiative and want to take on more

So, this is in writing. And I received a 3.5% salary raise.

And two weeks later, they want to possibly fire me. For me, I see serious injustice going on here.

Yeah, that speaks volumes. And firing should never be a surprise unless there is unethical ornillegal conduct. Your manager is just a bad manager. And hopefully your ceo sees that.

yes thank you, Seesaw. My boss is a TERRIBLE boss. Ironic that I first thought he was the best boss ever. SO ironic.

I don't believe I have this wrong but this is all I have to say.

This statement is true, since the dawn of time and the first human resources department.

While it was originally called the 'personnel dept.,' human resources has evolved past protecting the worker's rights to protecting companies' and corporations' from lawsuits by their employees.

As this article's title indicates, "HR is not there to be your friend, it's there to protect the company."

Read this woman's blog about her yearlong stint as an Uber driver and how their human resources dept. tried to screw her over.

Yes, you had to defend yourself against your boss, golden_eve. But what tecomsin says IS factual: human resources departments no longer are there to protect the employee, but to protect the company from the employee.

Bottom line: do NOT trust a human resources dept. to help you or protect you while you are in your workplace. Their agenda is to protect the company's financials, not the employee's benefits or safety on the job.

What I meAnt was wrong was the assumption that I’m trying to prove my boss wrong. I am clearing up misperceptions.

Please.. I don’t want to have to defend myself on my own thread. Please just be supportive. I don’t need people to try and argue points with me. Thanks.

I’m already on the defensive because of work. Going to HR is besides the point. I’m being fired for other reasons, if they do fire me. My boss has lied to the CEO about things I’ve said.

I guess I am just really floored by this quick change of events given that I had such a positive review only just a few weeks ago. And here's exactly what my boss's boss wrote to me JUST after my review:

"I can’t believe that a year has passed already, but you have made such a huge and POSITIVE impact on the Web Services team! I appreciate your hard work and talents and really look forward to you expanding your SEO/Web Services knowledge, client communication and interaction experience... "

It makes little sense to me, the quick change of sentiments. I guess I can't rely on a positive review for much in this company. They fire people easily. They fired our SEO Director when I first got there, they fired someone else only a couple weeks ago, and masses of people have left the company in droves. Something is very wrong here.

My roommate tells me never to take these events personally. But how can you not?! For whatever reason this has happened to you, golden_eve, all you can do at this point, is prepare yourself for the worse case scenario -- that they fire you.

I think the people who get fired, tend to be the people who contribute the most effort to their roles and to their departments.

Like I said earlier, the slackers NEVER get fired. Somehow, they obtain job security, weasel their way into promotions they have no business being given, and they sabotage their more successful coworkers' with divisive strategies worthy of Sherlock Holmes or the really catty Housewives of Orange County (those women are catty as hell).

When I was hired to teach community college 20 years ago, I only had my bachelors. I was over the moon. But not even one month after I was hired, the man who hired me, was FIRED and a CHEF took over his position as the community college's education director. Um, you're a chef, dude, you don't have any academic credentials like this guy who hired me did. But that's what happened. Soon after the crooked chef took over, he promoted the crappy instructors from part-time to full-time, and gave the dept. ONE SEMESTER to enroll in a masters program (which by the way, is not a terminal degree for teaching...a masters of arts is useless without a ph.d. behind it for teaching). Of course, none of us with bachelor degrees pulled that off, so we were all let go.

Now, community colleges here in my city require 2 masters degrees or a masters plus a ph.d. which is all about politics.

Thank you, Blanche. Yeah, how can I not take it personally, right? And especially after such a glowing review and glowing remarks by my boss's boss?

Thing is, I am learning that in my company, they place ppl in positions who are not prepared for them.... so they are less successful with it and create problems for those under them. And my boss promoted someone because they are best pals, not necessarily because he is fully qualfied.

Could you talk to your boss about it? Could it be that misunderstood or misinterpreted rather that flat out lied.

I clearly misunderstood all this too. I thought you wanted to work with social media and requested to be given that role but when you got it, you said you don’t know how to do it and then wanted it to be taken off your plate. That’s what your boss possibly reported to CEO? That you requested to take on a task that you weren’t familiar with? It’s nothing to be fired for but the whole thing is confusing. It’s possibly confusing for your boss too.

Could you go see him on Monday and discuss what happened? No arguing, just asking him how he understood this situation.

I never asked to be placed on charge of all social stratgey all of a sudden. That's the role he put me in, I didn't ask for that.

Yes, but if many of us misunderstood it, is it possible that your boss did too? Maybe this could be cleared up and smoothed out if you were able to clarify that you and your boss were on different pages about what you wanted. Just trying to think of ways to get you out of the hot seat until you move on.

I think I misunderstood then that you asked to be in charge of social media. So you only wanted to do some of it?

I remember your excited post when you were put in charge of social media. You were thrilled and we were thrilled for you. But quickly after you said you didn’t know how to do this job (it wasn’t just being overwhelmed with amount of work, it was not knowing how to do it).

But when you were assigned that task, you never told your boss that you don’t know how to do it and perhaps either need training or just can’t take on this task. It is entirely possible that you thought you could do it or misunderstood what the task meant. That happens.

You wouldn’t be the first time someone ended in this situation when they thought they could do something and turned out they can’t. It’s not the end of the world. I’d really focus just talking to your boss and your CEO about misunderstanding and maybe accept some responsibility for the confusion and not admitting or not knowing that you can’t do the job..

And I think I posted on one of your other threads what I would do. I’d go to my bosses and tell them that you really want to keep a job and you’d like to Improve as employee and want to know how they’d like you to improve so you can be a better asset for the company. Shift focus from defending yourself to improving yourself in order to benefit your team. If they do tell you how to improve then focus on that. In the meanwhile keep actively looking for a job.

I don’t want you to feel that this isn’t supportive. I could just say that there is nothing for you to improve and they are all a$$holes. Maybe it would sound more supportive but it wont help you to keep your job if that’s the goal.

Hopefully they are receptive to your questions re improvement and you can stick around until you find something else

Maybe I got confused. I thought I was asking to be involved. He never told me he was going to place me in charge of strategy. Several people had expressed an interest and we met as a group. But then he just announced it suddenly to tbe group after I presented something about how we can do it better. I thought when I expressed an interest that it meant I would be involved. I never thought that I would be running it. And yes, it was too much.Maybe I misunderstood.

It doesn't matter now. If I'm going to be fired, then I am and there's nothing I can do about it. The next meeting is with the CEO again. Nothing I say to my boss is going to matter now. I've already pleaded my case.

It has sounded to me that each place you have been involved with in that company you noticed how things were not being run right and found yourself expected to suddenly take over when you were not prepared to do that. My understanding of what you have shared is that you had been put in the position of having to own up to shody work with a client when you had nothing to do with whatever was done inadequately for that client. I got the impression that you were exited to move to the Social in that company but you were not expecting to begin working in that area to find out it was being badly run and you suddenly being expected to fix it and act like you had been part of whatever was not being run right. I think you had been expecting to experience a presence that was already running that area well and that you were going to be able to learn and work in that area that was being run right instead.

I think that you want to be respected and appreciated for what you produce and you tend to keep running into relationships where you don't get the respect, appreciation, and support that you desire. You tend to end up being expected to be the "caregiver" too where you are expected to take care of whatever while the other individual can slack off thinking you will just give into them.

What does "I like you" mean when someone says that to you?

Yes OE, some of that is correct. I was expected to take ownership of past strategies that weren’t working or pretend as though I had been involved when I wasn't. The Director whom I took over for didn’t even want to introduce me as new to the social team. She said let’s approach it as though you’ve been involved. Total bs. That’s lying to the client. I told the account services lead that that isn’t ethical and I refuse to participate in that.

Basically this company is unethical. Clearly if after a glowing review and accolades that I’m then going to be fired, something is awry.

I want no part of how they operate and want out.

When someone says “I like you” I take it for what it’s worth. The CEO comes up to my desk pretty frequently to chat. I’m the only one on my team he does that with. I can tell he really likes me. At least I have that, as a possible future work reference, even if they let me go.