The “reason” I was terminated

Today I received my security file from the Department of Energy.  Enclosed was the first specific allegation of wrongdoing on my part.  They claimed I used the company computer for hosting my personal websites.  This allegation is completely false and I explained this to HR on May 26th in response to their vague questions about “large quantities of personal information” on the company computers.  As I then suspected, they didn’t believe me.  They could have verified my story with any number of my co-workers, the customer, the IT department (who would be aware of any traffic of that nature on the network), by looking up the IP addresses associated with those websites, or a call to my hosting provider.  They apparently did none of those things. I know for certain they didn’t talk to my co-workers and my hosting provider.  I suspect they did not talk to the customer–for reasons I can’t go into here.  This explains why they claimed I was dishonest.  They didn’t believe me and didn’t bother to check it out.

Why did they not bother to check out my story?  I can only think of the following reasons:

  • They didn’t want to know the truth–they needed an excuse to fire me for being “a gun nut”.
  • They were/are incompetent.

Am I missing something?

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2 thoughts on “The “reason” I was terminated

  1. Seems to me that if you were posting to your blog from your work computer, possibly even from your home internet connection outside of working hours, that might also fall under “operating a personal website”.

  2. Correct–if taken entirely by itself. However within the context of the meeting I had with the HR department the day before this memo was sent it means I was “hosting” my personal website on the company computer. Which is blatently false. I had copies of numerous of website for which I was the webmaster on company computers–because we needed to simulate browsing the web without a connection to the Internet. I “donated” my websites to save the company the time and money of creating phony websites to demonstrate software. My project manager, numerous co-workers, and the customer all knew this. HR didn’t bother to ask any of them if what I told HR was true or not.

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