Now, Former Boss E-mails/Text Daily...

My now former boss sent me these two e-mails yesterday to my personal email. Along with that he left two voicemails on my personal phone and two text messages.

Theses are the emails.

First Email
"Please contact me on my cell at your earliest convenience. I have a question or two for you. Thanks!"

Second Email

" I do have a couple of comments of business, personal, and forward-looking natures. please call my cell tomorrow ASAP."

Would you call him to see what he wants or just keep ignoring him? I think he just wants a bunch of info on how to do his job but, I'm not sure.

JaredBusch

@thecreativeone91 said:

My now former boss sent me these two e-mails yesterday to my personal email. Along with that he left two voicemails on my personal phone and two text messages.

Theses are the emails.

First Email
"Please contact me on my cell at your earliest convenience. I have a question or two for you. Thanks!"

Second Email

" I do have a couple of comments of business, personal, and forward-looking natures. please call my cell tomorrow ASAP."

Would you call him to see what he wants or just keep ignoring him? I think he just wants a bunch of info on how to do his job but, I'm not sure.

I would not contact by voice unless the calls were recorded. You are no longer employed and doing any work without compensation is just being taken advantage of.

Do not ignore it. Reply by email that you would be happy to answer the questions, only if paid to do so.

JaredBusch

and I would CC his boss.

thanksajdotcom

I would say call him but, before he can speak, tell him you will not answer technical questions unless you are to be paid as a contractor. If he wants to know something about the environment, or how to do this or that, do not answer. It's not your problem, and you could, potentially, be held liable if he takes your advice and screws it up.

JaredBusch

I might add that when I left my prior position in 2009 I flat told them that I would be happy to contract per hour for any support assistance they needed. The rate was $150/hour and billed by my new employer.

We did about 50 hours of work over the course of 2010. haven't heard from them since.

scottalanmiller

A lot of it depends on the state of your relationship. But definitely set up a consulting situation so that they have a means of legitimately using your services and you get paid for it.

I sent them an email. Funny thing is He hasn't even disabled my company email or even my ability to remote in. If it were me, that would have been the first thing I would have done.

play your cards right, you could make a good bit of change

thanksajdotcom

@thecreativeone91 said:

I sent them an email. Funny thing is He hasn't even disabled my company email or even my ability to remote in. If it were me, that would have been the first thing I would have done.

Don't use those, or now you're VERY liable for damages.

@ajstringham I'm not. I just can't believe he didn't disable it when my phone start getting stuff still.

thanksajdotcom

@thecreativeone91 said:

@ajstringham I'm not. I just can't believe he didn't disable it when my phone start getting stuff still.

Well, remove the account from your phone.

any more movement on this from yesterday? Contracting for a former employee is kind of fun. It let's em see how valuable you were to the company, and it also points out what baskets the eggs were in.

thanksajdotcom

@Hubtech said:

any more movement on this from yesterday? Contracting for a former employee is kind of fun. It let's em see how valuable you were to the company, and it also points out what baskets the eggs were in.

Very good point.

They are not willing to pay me. He says the information on how to manage this stuff is REQUIRED from me wether I work for them or not. Paid or unpaid. Here is his latest text.

"As your advocate, I strongly encourage you to respond to the email I just sent to [personal email removed]. questions? Call my cell."

Email says if I don't give Him information on both how to put ports in certain vlans on all switches, how to manage WSUS (I don't know how that isn't explanatory when you open the console). and Why the IM server is missing which was there last year (this was a never deployed Openfire server that I deleted shortly after making it.) but, he now wants the files for it. He said if the information isn't received in full by end of day they will take me to court. so basicly he wants this all done without pay: http://mangolassi.it/topic/1913/it-documentation

I wonder if I'd have a case with the EEOC for this (harassment)?

if you're telling the truth, they have no legal legs to stand on. he just didn't do his job very well while you were employed there. lawyer up, win, make them pay your court costs lol. then offer your contracting fees, which should be lofty.

Dashrender

Interesting,
I'd call if I left on good terms, but as others have said, definitely start the conversation off by saying you need to get a contract in place before you can provide any advice or service.

But you've already replied that he is demanding instructional steps without paying you and threatening to sue you - at this point I'd break off all communications with him.

Perhaps it would be worth one additional call to his boss, or the CEO informing them of what is going on, and that you are still willing to be a consultant for that company (assuming you are). If they don't want to retain your services in a consulting manner that contact from any employee of that company needs to stop.

I sent a very long e-mail to the HR director and County administrator. Explain what was going on, and that action would be taken if it wasn't stopped.

I also sent an e-mail to my former boss and his boss saying that any further contact needs to come only from the HR director or the County administrator and that any more emails with technical questions will be consider consulting billable to the county at $150/hr and a minimum of 4hrs.

I guess that's being a jerk but that's the only way I know to handle it. I'm going to wait to file any action against them to see if they will just offer me a severance package because of all this crap I had to put of with. I send the County Administrator & HR copies of the personal e-mails/texts I have received while out on FMLA without pay telling me I had to do work.

I don't think I will ever work in government again. Other governments I've worked for have been great but this place has ruined it for me. I just hope it doesn't ruin IT for me as well.

@thecreativeone91 if it does ruin IT for you, you're not cut out for it anyway You did good, now just sit back and see what happens.

thanksajdotcom

@Hubtech said:

@thecreativeone91 if it does ruin IT for you, you're not cut out for it anyway You did good, now just sit back and see what happens.

Ditto this.