Somebody Stab me in the Eyes, Please in Days of My Destiny

Email from the Treasurer:

"Dear all, Previous Director has a new phone and therefore my blocking has not worked. She has asked if she is worthy if a reference. I will not give her a reference! I will keep message for meeting. Maybe she thinks I am stupid?"

Responses....

From Previous Vice President: "I would also not give her a ref sorry."

From Previous President: "I will give her a reference but will be honest....so that might not be what she needs. So maybe I should not do it to protect her. Who else did she message with her request? The whole committee?"

Reply from Treasurer: "I think we should be more concerned about protecting the organization. An honest reference is not going to be a positive thing for the organisation. I am still blown away that she has approached me."

Response by Yours Truly:

*Good evening,

There is nothing wrong with not supplying a reference letter at all. The fact that she will not get one speaks for itself on behalf of the organization. I have not been approached for one, nor would I write one as I only met her less than two months ago and would therefore be ill equipped for it, as would the Vice President and Secretary. However, if she writes the organization's name down as her previous employer and her potential employer contacts us, then we will have no choice but to be honest over the phone. It's been done before, she is not the only employee under the sun to have ever left her job in such horrible terms.

If we can look at this objectively, then her positive qualities were: - Enthusiasm - ..... what else?

And her negative qualities were: - Under skilled in areas she promised at the interview she was skilled in (am I right? That she had given the impression she could do certain things when in fact she couldn't? This has been passed on to me by the previous executives.) - Was unprofessional in the way she went about her resignation - ......what else?

I think that if this is going to the whole committee then, as painful as it might be, we need to discuss these qualities, both positive and negative. Because at the end of the day, we need to be on the same page regarding what our feedback would be if her potential employer were to contact us.

If anyone on the committee did want to write a reference of any sort then there would be an issue because the committee needs to stick together. But even then, they would only be able to supply a "personal reference," which would be weak anyway because nobody worked closely enough with her. The ones who did work closely with her were A and B which are staff not committee. It might be an idea to raise your concerns with them.

I can appreciate that Previous Director caused deep hurt, and that for some it would feel great to never speak anything positive about her again, but is this really healthy to do as a committee? Do we really need or want her to have a hold on us? We can still have a healthy discussion about this former employee as a committee. I do understand that we are trying to close the Previous Director Chapter as soon as possible in order to truly move forward and that her contacting Treasurer has not been helpful. However just remember that we are all strong women and can move forward professionally.

Regards,*

This is just such crap. I don't know if I think it's crap because I don't know how committees work and am ignorant to some important way of doing things out there in the big bad world, or if I think it's crap because my way of thinking and doing things is just so beyond this bull.