I registered with this agency before Christmas, and was told business was picking up and that there were growing opportunities for temp and temp-to-perm. Now mid-January, and after having had a great interview with one of their account managers, and having followed up by building a profile on their website and applying for numerous applicable jobs, I have not received even a single temp assignment or any sort of followup by phone or email by any Office Team account manager.
This week I called and left 2 messages for an account manager to call me back to see why I have not been offered a single opportunity despite having fulfilled all of their application requirements and having been told in the interview that I would be a great candidate for their offerings in administrative assistance. No one returned the call, and still no action on any application of mine through their agency.
I am getting the distinct impression that I am being shunned as undesirable even as a lowly at-will temporary employee, and there is nothing I can do about being over 50 years old!
Nor is there anything I can do about being blackballed from having been the victim of workplace retaliation that continued in the form of a former employer blackballing me and giving me no other option than suing them for defamation for continuing to falsely tell potential employers they had fired me when in fact I had left that employment on a union-negotiated association-level grievance for retaliation after having been "transferred" to a cold, dirty storage room to do my "job" as a math coach for a large East San Jose school district, and all for having insisted on a written job description from a workplace bully who a 30-year veteran school secretary had described saying, "I just want you to know your boss has ruined many people's careers, and for the fun of it."
I had explained all this to the person I interviewed with at Office Team in San Francisco, and she told me she sympathized. I told her that I had tried both approaches - both omitting such information altogether (especially since the settlement is supposed to be confidential along with the fact that they paid me $100k to settle - reflecting the fact that despite no admission of wrongdoing, they knew that if it ever went to trial that I could sufficiently show sufficient cause, bu that I could prove culpability beyond the shadow of a doubt - or they would have compelled the judge to dismiss it in a summary judgment, and probably continue to do it, since they breached the agreement for the retaliation grievance as soon as it was signed. Nor did the $100k even begin to meet my loss of 2 yrs employment by then at $72k/yr), and following the recent advice of an attorney to explain the whole matter and hope to find a sympathetic employer - all of which gets me the same results - excluded not only from my now-ruined career in education, but from any new employment altogether - and, yes, that's supposed to be illegal (but the general counsel for the DIR informs me that it's unenforceable outside of a civil suit, despite being a misdemeanor - that neither the DIR nor the Santa Clara County DA will serve or develop a case for or serve the misdemeanor warrantless misdeameanor called for by law, despite evidence of it being ongoing even as recently as last year, several years after leaving that employment, and a year after settling a defamation lawsuit, and all in breach of contract, that the district's general counsel assures me I'd never be able to "prove"). I continue to be told that my only available action is to bring more civil litigation, which is dubiously helpful since it's only enhanced and now cemented my utterly complete exclusion from the workforce - even to the extent of being able to obtain a single assignment (I'd also registered months ago online with Kelly Services and Manpower Services, and I type 60+ wom) as a temporary employee through a 3rd-party placement agency as an at-will worker with no rights!
So, I suppose if you're an employer out there who is reading this, and you can appreciate someone who is bright and articulate and who has the courage and fortitude to attempt to change the culture of an organization deeply committed to retaliation, however unsuccessfully, with a semester of law school at SFLS, an MA from the UW in International Studies, a teaching credential with SF State with over 5 years experience teaching secondary mathematics and an additional year as a math coach, a BA from UC Berkeley in Asian Studies who has translated research articles in semiconductor manufacturing research methods and has academic background up through the 3rd-yr college level in Korean, Chinese, and Japanese, with 4 years of French in high school, a year of Spanish, and a first-year summer intensive program in Russian, along with the equivalent of a BS in Mathematics and Computer Science at Cal State Hayward and 2 years experience as a technical writer/editor, call 5104275880 read more
