A tough story, submitted as an anonymous post:

My comments: Anonymous, a tough spot to be in and one that challenges you professionally and morally. Honestly, I'd be making plans for a transition to another job. I realize that can take time, and I'd want to move to a place/position that I think fits me, but a move is something I'd look to do in the next year.

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My Bad Day is, unfortunately for me, is still happening. I work for a non-profit agency under contract to the City to provide some initial counseling for low income people in need of the services we provide and treatment we fund. We have some databases in which we track data points concerning the counseling and also track the City’s money as it’s used to fund our customers’ treatment. I’ve been involved in much of the writing of the applications we use and helped writing many of the views and stored procedures used, as well as designing tables and coming up with procedures to handle the business. Due to the nature of our business and the clientele that we serve, their need will always exceed the ability to meet it. It’s unfortunate, but true. Therefore, in an effort to be fiscally responsible and because we are stewards of the public’s funds, many years ago we instituted a plan of dividing the annual allotment of funds into quarterly allotments. Through our hard won experience we had learned that if you don’t do this, then you’ll run out of money to fund treatment 6 to 8 weeks before the end of the fiscal year. This way, by dividing the annual allotment up into quarterly allotments, we’d likely run out the last 2 weeks of a quarter, but that was easier for those agencies providing treatment we reimbursed using the City’s funds. It was better to be out of money for just 2 weeks, then 6 to 8 weeks at the end of the fiscal year.

Around 2007 or so the people at the City who managed our agency, retired. The management that took over have an entirely different philosophy, concerning trying to meet the needs of our clients. They want to always meet the needs regardless of how much it costs. That’s great, so long as you have an infinite amount of resources, but the City doesn’t. Naturally the recession only exacerbated the situation. Our agency’s operating budget has gone down almost 45%, since the retirement of the original managers. And we’ve lost more than 50% of staff through layoffs since 2007/2008. In the IT department we were at 4, we’re now down to two. Since I’m now the accidental DBA, I have to do all of the things the previous IT manager used to do, that the new City management asks, and that includes what I call stealing from Peter to pay Paul. They’ll ask that we move money from a later quarter to the current quarter so that there’s no break in coverage for financing treatment. Even though the current City management was told, repeatedly by my former IT manager, that we had a system in place so that funds would stretch through the fiscal year, City management has consistently ignored our advice. I’ve learned from my former boss that trying to get the current City management to see wisdom is useless. Naturally we run out of funds 6 to 8 weeks before the end of the fiscal year. What’s happened the last couple of years is the current City management has found funds from other departments at the City, through other agencies that contact to those other City departments, by taking money from their budgets to feed our own. I know of one agency which was closed, and I’ve reason to believe it was so that the City could continue to fund the treatment we provide. I feel awful that we were inadvertently responsible for closing another agency and laying those people off. Last fiscal year, I was told that my job might be eliminated, again to provide uninterrupted treatment for the needy public. I survived last year, but do not believe that I’ll survive this year. I’m likely to find out in the next month or at most two, if my prediction of losing my job, is correct.

What makes matters worse is my surviving IT colleague. I’ve been warned by other co-workers that my IT colleague is trying to damage my reputation. I believe this is likely possible, because she comes to me to bad mouth our other co-workers. If she comes to me to bad mouth others, I have to believe it’s likely she goes to others to bad mouth me. Certainly, if the issue is just money, I’m the larger target, since I’m a level 3 and my IT colleague is just a level 2. For the last 2 years I’ve lived with the fear of losing my job. Sometimes, it’s hard to sleep at night.

Steve has suggested that writing this down might be cathartic. I guess it might be. I won’t reply to any message posted in the thread for this article for obvious reasons, but I will follow with great interest what people, especially if any reply to my post (through Steve).