Ex employer keeps contacting me

[northchesterforest]

I was made redundant in January after 5 years in a role. They asked me to leave the same day. It wasn't personal as a lot of others in the company got the same treatment. The thing is, for the last two weeks I've been getting emails from my old boss asking where certain files are. Most of them were saved on my personal work g drive, which they are saying they can no longer access.

I must admit I wasn't great at organising my files for other people but I always knew where to access them, and honestly I was great at my job and a lot of what you would need to know was stored in my head, from working in the role for so long. I feel like they are accusing me of withholding information but do they even have a leg to stand on? Should I start ignoring them? I'm politely responding for now and trying to help them find things but I don't have access to anything anymore so there is only so much I can do?

In my old company the g drive was also known as 'the teenagers bedroom floor' ie it was a filthy mess, you'd be lucky to find anything in it and if you did , it would probably not be in a good state 😂😂😂😂

The internet is full of 'petty revenge' stories of companies firing people then realising that they've lost vital calendars/ files/passwords/ contacts, and the ex employees telling them to bugger off and that they can't help.

You are not alone.

It might also be worth adding into any response that it would be a serious breach of IT security to be discussing files and access after you no longer work there (it's a bit of a stretch but likely to scare them into not contacting you again).

Cheeky fuckers.

I would just tell them you are no longer available and they will need to contact IT as everything is on the shared drive. What are they going to do, sack you?

I’m going to go against the grain here. Part of your job was to save things on the shared drive. That is a very normal requirement for most offices. If you didn’t do it, then you should be helping them find them.

Also, presumably you’ll need a reference from them for your next job, so it will harm you if you behave poorly. Don’t cut your nose off to spite your face.

My old manager did this but I had saved everything correctly so she was just crap at finding them. I even left handover notes saved on Teams for her, but she wanted a physical document (not sure why she couldn't print them).

I blocked her when she started asking for minutes (which were also saved and with the committee chair). She then started getting a colleague to message me about things. They were blocked, too.

I would make sure to CC HR in any reply to mmm you do make too. I wonder if they know the boss is emailing you?

They should have considered this before making you redundant. Their problem not yours.

Well they shouldn't have let you go the same day should they 🤷🏽‍♀️

With the "reasonable assistance", if that's in your settlement agreement, haven't they put themselves in this position as they could have given you a notice period rather than gardening leave, in which you could have tidied up your files. I am also not great at keeping files tidy, it's very common..... when I leave a role it's one of the things I do in my notice period to go back and check I've filed everything in the right place and everything is accessible. I don't think it's reasonable to ask for assistance with something you deprived the ex employee of the opportunity to do in the first place.

When I left my last job after a couple of months I got people coming to me asking for information about things, I told them it was all filed/in their inbox and not to contact me again (we had parted on bad terms because..... their lack of boundaries!)

Well if it makes you feel better, imagine they fired her for not putting things on the shared drive. Now what? Why isn't it their job to make sure they've got all they need before they lay someone off, almost certainly for idiotic decisions made by higher up, better paid people who are still there?

The reference is another matter but if she's friendly with someone there, she could get it from them. Better than the dry nothing you'd get from HR and saves new employers having to talk to an HR department, which is a plus in anyone's book.

I interpreted that as being on a personal file within the company's computer system. Probably each employee had such a file for projects they were currently working on to prevent anyone else accidentally altering or deleting them.

As long as the company has access, it's up to them to sort through stuff, not for OP to have to tell them where everything is. Maybe OP has a somewhat "individual" filing system, but it worked for her.

OP - See if they want to hire you back in a consultancy role until you've sorted everything for them. You aren't their employee any more, they have no right to your time. Unless, as others have said, you need to keep them onside make it clear that you don't have time to do their work for them.

And as @AlisonDonut has suggested send them this: 'Hi. I am not sure if you are aware but you made me redundant and told me to leave the same day. I haven't access to any files. Should you need any, they are all on the system that you stopped me from being able to access, the day you made me redundant. I'm not sure why you keep contacting me, when you know all the above. Please stop contacting me.'

I've heard of a case where someone who signed a settlement agreement but breached the terms and got sued. I would take Duh's advice if I were you, OP. It's a job, keep it professional.

Not necessarily. We have Personal One Drives that people can use for their own work - but IT can always access them and give people who need them access to if needed.

Makes me feel better?? I think you’re assuming a level of investment in this post that I don’t have! Yes the company has behaved very poorly, but it is always better to be pragmatic.

Thank you all for the advice, it's really appreciated. For the sake of peace and my settlement I'm going to be cooperative, for now. Hoping that's it won't be long until they leave me alone!

That sounds like IT can solve it. In the other hand if the files are relevant and I was your boss I would be calling you because personal drives or email account are not important information storage.
For those who think the company shouldn't contact OP, if OP had used the filing system correctly they wouldn't contact her. Although, she was redundant in January, IT should have solved this by now.

Both are somehow in the wrong/ right OP and the company.

Hmm. This reads to me somewhat like "if I don't complain about being used as a doormat eventually everyone's feet will be clean and I will be left alone". Your choice of course.

I think when Op says personal drive it means individual drive, i.e a network share assigned to her however on the company network drives.

Op, IT will have access but I guess they don't want to search files, which TBF is a nightmare on Windows network drives. However it is unreasonable for them to expect you to remember the file paths when you don't have access to the system.

I think your approach is fine, helpful in this instance but go quieter if the requests keep coming in. Have you managed to get another job?

So all the advice was a complete waste of time then because you're just going to carry on as you are?

Yes that too.

I would get a very bad reference if I, a finance person, just saved files in places they can't be found or very hard (yes one file can be found but ensuring they have captured all your files may involve many hours of sorting and re-filing in correct place

What OP tell them to stop contacting you. They sacked you and sent you home in the same day. If they'd had any decency they'd have kept you on a month allowing you to find a new job and transfer all files and get them up to date with your work.

"I don't work for you any more, please stop contacting me about company files."

They didn't give you time to hand over or sort out transferring files to a shared area so I'm not sure how this is your problem any more

This sort of contact is the sign of a deeply disorganised and dysfunctional team tbh. They should have processes in place to store/access files of team members who leave

I once worked for a place who kept ringing my predecessor about things. I was young then and didn't realise what a bin fire they were!

Reply to each message "Hi Manager, As I'm no longer employed by Company, I have no recollection of where X or Y is stored. I suggest you contact your IT Service Desk directly going forwards. Any future communications to me in relation to anything from my former role will incur a handling and processing fee of £XXX per message. Kind regards @northchesterforest "

Don't put up with being contacted by a former employer, no matter how nice they were, you have to look after YOU and they should know their filing systems or be able to do a search at a top level for the name of the file(s). Or they could hire you back!

You can be both cooperative and firm. something like:

“All documents were stored in the company systems, if they are not in the shared drive then they must be in my personal drive. Unfortunately I was not given a notice period during which I could have moved files over. My understanding is that IT have access to personal drives. I want to help but no longer have access to any company IT and therefore this is all I can say.”

Most companies make you sign an IT use policy which is explicit that IT can access your personal drive.

It's probably not great to store something on a 'personal' drive that is work related.

By this I mean that I have a file structure with my name at the very top (so it's a personal drive) but it's also on the company's IT infrastructure. When I retire, that drive will be deleted after a predetermined data retention. If they need anything from it, they will have to go to back-ups and restore the drive at that point.
There are also shared network drives or storage locations in the cloud that will remain whether I'm employed in the company or not.

You said you stored them on a 'personal' drive - was that a drive that you and only you had access to?

''@StrawberryEater

I’m going to go against the grain here. Part of your job was to save things on the shared drive. That is a very normal requirement for most offices. If you didn’t do it, then you should be helping them find them.

Also, presumably you’ll need a reference from them for your next job, so it will harm you if you behave poorly. Don’t cut your nose off to spite your face.''

For goodness sake.

In all the companies I have worked for I have had a shared drive that can be accessed by anyone who has permission and a personal drive or folder.

You are not going to save every single file/draft your are working on on the shared drive...you only save content that is completed and needs to be seen/accessed by other people.

Plus people usually have content (copy of contract, personal notes) that they want to keep in their own files.

The company is at fault by not giving people a proper chance to organise their files and save everything that needed to be saved and delete what was irrelevant before their access was revoked.

Some people will really say anything to bash employees no matter how unreasonable the employer...

Not to mention that it must be really strange for clients/customers to suddenly have someone disappear without being informed that their contact might have changed.

Badly handled redundancy process.

We would be in serious trouble if we saved things on our individual drives rather than the shared one in my role - the “you could be knocked down by a bus tomorrow” way of thinking definitely exists

I have worked with colleagues that save things down locally with the I will put it in the shared drive later attitude and it’s frustrating as it wastes so much time and can also be a huge risk

But in your case they gave you access to one and also didn’t give you time to sort your affairs before letting you go so they are in this position now

If you want to stay on their good side I would spend today thinking about what files you have saved locally that they might need and write a list and send it on with a note saying this is as much as I remember please don’t contact me for anything else as I don’t know