Bad-bye!

Received a couple of ugly emails from my former bosses yesterday, and they've got me very infuriated. Never been so angry for a very very very long time. (I can't remember when I was last this angry.)

I had been very careful not to say anything against them because:
1 - They were an authority set over me.
2 - My colleagues do read my blog.
But now they are my former bosses, and after this post, I would have severed all ties with the company (not my former colleagues), so forgive my bluntness.

Basically June sent an email to our former bosses asking when our last payslips would be ready, and my former boss B sent me a mail saying they're still working out my pay for August due to major issues with my code in the last few months. He then stated a few problems in my projects, questioned my professionalism, and said I imposed problems on the team due to piling resource issues at that time.

(This is my August pay mind you, and they haven't even paid me my pay adjustment for June yet. I don't remember anywhere in my contract that says my salary was negotiable, based on performance.)

Well, it turned out that most of problems were either not caused by me, or were inherent in the old systems. So, I wrote back and addressed the issues, and reminded them that I had announced my intention to leave in early June (or maybe May), so they should have had two months to look for a replacement for me. Furthermore, he himself said I could go, and I could work while I was clearing my leave.

So I told my former bosses that we have been very patient with them. They had caused June enough emotional trauma during her resignation, and I've had enough of their nonsense.

I told them under Ministry of Manpower's law, salaries need to be paid out on the last day of employment if required notice has been served, or seven days of the last day of employment if notice period has not been served. Either way, they have exceeded this period by a couple of weeks/months for both of us at least.

And I told them under the same act, they are not authorised to deduct my pay apart from a few special conditions, which I'm sure I had not violated.

I said we've many opportunities to ask the MoM to act on our behalf but we did not want to, and asked them not to push it.

So my former big boss J wrote back saying a couple of things, amongst which was this:
"Please do not threaten us. We have restrained ourselves from taking legal action against you, because we do not want to affect you or your future career."

Wow, that's great isn't it?! I got their agreement to let me go work while clearing my leave BEFORE I had even signed anything or gave a verbal agreement to my present company that I would start working. If this is not called underhandedness, I don't know a better term for it.

(It's a good thing I've kept all my mails.)

I just wanted to tell them that we are not ignorant and neither do we like being bullied. If we had wanted to threaten or get MoM to execute, we could have done so long long time ago, and would have saved us a lot of time, trouble and heartache. This is how they show their gratitude. Well done.

My boss B then came back to me with another mail accusing me of several more things that I had failed to do, and it turned out that even more of those were not my fault. So all the projects that were handed to me because other people left becomes my fault?

He even said my report works only for 3 months while the reports done previously worked for 2 years. Right! Before I left I spent several days overtime fixing the discrepancies in just those reports that "worked for 2 years"! They themselves know about it!

Hey, I completed everything they asked me to do for my handover, and I even did a few more things for them because I thought it would be helpful to them. I even helped one of my colleagues recently to set up one of the mac mini machines that was down. So much for appreciation!

(I don't know who started the rumour that I was supposed to do MIRS documentation before I left. I was not supposed to. The project was still pending customer changes when I left. How to do documentation?)

I wrote back once more to address the issues and left 2 thoughts with them, which I hope they will take seriously:
1 - Reflect and see why people have been leaving one after another.
2 - Appreciate people by remembering the good they've done.

Saying that you appreciate people and then start digging at their faults seems very hypocritical to me. (I didn't put this in the email.)

They have since deleted my company mail with them. Good. Good riddance. That'll be the end of our relationship.

It's no more goodbye, it's bad-bye!