Update On Thursday

On Thursday night, I posted about how I was fired. It had never happened to me, and I'm still processing it. Fortunately, for the time being, fired in my case doesn't mean unemployed, although that is a possibility. As a contractor, I'm employed by another company. I was working embedded with my customer, and like I said, one of my tasks for some reason I never could produce at a level that met expectations. As I was the only person working on that task, I'm not sure how they expect not to fall behind while somebody else catches up since I was just starting to figure out what I was doing. I finally got the last few pieces in place, and in two or three weeks I would have been "there", but "there" was way past several deadlines. I had several other responsibilities, and it seemed like I was doing good work on those, but it wasn't enough. I guess I was assigned to that task because I'd done similar work in my previous job, but nowhere near at the level that was expected of me. I don't think anybody else on the team can do that work right off the line, so I'm not sure what they expect to do. I guess I hope getting rid of me solved all their problems. Other groups on that program contracted that kind of work out. We were the only group doing it in-house, and I'm not entirely convinced I was being supervised by people with much experience in that line of work. Like, they don't know what they don't know. It's in the past now.

I went into my parent company yesterday (Friday). I expected to be on overhead until somebody had time to review other listings and see what other positions I might fit in. I figured I'd go through the benefit information for open enrollment that I haven't gotten to because I'd been trying to meet yet another deadline on that task. Turns out a major project with a Monday deadline was underway, so when a team member saw me over there, he pulled me onto it. I at first protested, saying "I just got fired from my contract for my work on that kind of project", but they needed me enough. It turns out that I have the proper mentorship on this team, and within 2-3 hours I was off the ground. Why I didn't ask that group for help months ago will probably go down in my memoirs as one of my greatest mistakes. The project is big enough and the deadline close enough that I ended up with some overtime last night and permission to work on the project from home this weekend to get it finished up by Monday. Considering how close I could be to unemployed, I'm grateful for the overtime and the chance to redeem myself on this kind of work.

In the short term at least, things look good. I've seen my company go to great lengths for other people who ended up off their contracts. They may absorb some overheard on me for the short term, but if the project for Monday gets finished up, more work like that could come in and they might need me for that.

So, I screwed up pretty bad, but for now things look hopeful.