I interrupt my employment saga for a brief update on my firing. One year after I was fired, I received a phone call from the Northwest Regional Educational Laboratory. The person said he worked in personnel and asked if I would be willing to come into Portland and talk about my “termination.” Curious, I agreed to meet with the man.

He began by asking me why I had refused to sign my last performance review. I told him that the review was inaccurate and was directly contradictory to one I had received just a few months earlier. I also told him that I was accused of “going to Montana without permission,” a trip I reminded him had been fully paid for by the Lab.

He then apologized for my firing. He asked if I wanted to be employed again by the Lab. Wondering what was going on, I asked him. While he was very vague, he hinted that  “improprieties” had been discovered about the manager who had fired me. He in turn had been fired. I doubted his sleeping with the secretary on the office floor was his only impropriety! (This we all knew about before we were fired.) I understood that it had to do with improper use of funds. This personnel man was trying to clean up the mess left by this manager.

I assured him I had no interest in returning to work there, that I was happily employed, and that I was simply glad that my personnel file would now be accurate. He assured me that the negative review was no longer part of my file and that they would give me a good reference if called for one. In retrospect he may have been trying to make sure I wasn’t going to sue for their treatment of me. But I was just happy to be out of there, and I was amazed that the truth had finally come to light.