How to deal with someone who has criticized me in past - now I have to be professional with him?

[GladitsnotJustMe]

I apologies in advance that this is long - but it's important to me to get the whole story down. It's an issue that has plagued me my whole career and I would really appreciate your thoughts on it.

All my life I have wanted to work in a particular, specialized, field. To this end, after my degree I volunteered for a charity working in this field for an intensive placement over the course of 4-5 months.

I worked for the charity full-time as a volunteer, and gained lots of experience. But, as a 21 year old living in a new town away from home, I also took advantage of the freedom and made lots of friends and had a bloody good time. I went out every night, but worked hard during the day.

Things started to become difficult when one of the guys working with the charity started to expect the volunteers to carry out work that was not part of their remit, and was in fact work that he was paying his own son to do. The work was akin to touting / canvassing the general public in the street. It came to a head one day when this guy told myself and the other volunteers to get out on the street, and while we were there, the son (who was employed to do this job) took advantage and buggered off on a jolly with his mates.

The guy came and verbally abused myself and the volunteers for not trying hard enough - literally swearing at us in the street in front of customers, and I left shortly afterwards. I must say I never complained about his behaviour (weak young thing that I was), but I simply came to the end of my time there and left on good terms.

During my time with the charity, the head of the organization visited us on several occasions. I was in awe of this man at first, believing he was the gateway to me finding a career in this subject in the future. I'll call him Mr X for ease of writing.

A couple of things struck me though. The first thing was that we accepted several volunteers who were young and inexperienced - they were collecting important scientific data that would be relied upon in reports etc, and I often felt they were inadequately trained and immature. One specific occasion, I remember a 15 year old girl from abroad came to work with us having already spent several weeks 'Living' alone with Mr X at his headquarters. A 15 year old girl is a child, and I felt that this was totally inappropriate (Mr X was in his 50s, unmarried, so they definitely were alone).

Secondly, myself and the volunteers rented a caravan during our time volunteering. It was an ancient old static caravan, so you can imagine there wasn't much space. Two tiny twin rooms, and one volunteer on a pull out bed in the living room. Tiny shared bathroom. On several occasions Mr X visited the project with another of his (male) staff, and insisted on staying in the caravan with us volunteers. We were all female, and at 21 I was by far the oldest. So on these occasions, I simply refused to stay in the caravan, 'giving up my space' for the men while staying out at one of my friend's houses. Admittedly, it probably looked bad me arriving back at the caravan in last night's 'going out clothes' to get changed to go to work - but go to work I did, and I worked hard.

i just felt that the head of an organization should not need, or indeed want, to stay in a tiny caravan with 3 young women (one of whom was 15 years old). There were plenty of hotels in the town. But again, I never said anything, although I may have made my disapproval clear with my refusal to stay there with them.

A few months later, I applied for a further degree, and called Mr X up to ask whether he would act as a reference for me, since the degree, and my career ambitions related to the experience I'd had working for him. He agreed and said he'd be happy to.

I very nearly didn't get on the degree course as I was informed I'd had a 'bad reference'. Luckily, I managed to find some other referees, got glowing references, and got on the course. But eventually, I was given copies of the references, and it turns out the bad one was from Mr X. He wrote that I was "Lazy, unwilling to apply herself, and more interested in having a good time in the local town than participating in research" and that he didn't think the degree course was appropriate, or that I fully understood what the course entailed.

I was completely and utterly devastated. None of that was true, I worked bloody hard for him, in the face of some pretty shitty treatment. Everyone knows that if you don't like someone you can either refuse to give them a reference, or write it in a neutral way that implies you don't think much of the person without actually saying nasty things.

I went on to some great achievements in my career, but I moved away from that particular subject, in no small part due to the crushing of my self confidence from this man. I have never forgotten it, and it still hurts me to this day. I lived in dread of ever coming face to face with him.

And then last week, I was offered a new position, finally bringing me back to my much loved field of work, and something I have longed for.

My new job will almost certainly bring me into contact with this man. It's a small field, and everyone knows each other. I'm worried that people will ask me about my experiences with Mr Xs charity, which they almost certainly will, and will introduce me to him expecting me to be friendly. We will attend meetings with Mr X, and probably have regular contact.

I have dreamed of the day I would finally tell him what I thought of him - but in reality I really shouldn't do that, should I? I dread him recognizing my name and asking whether I'd volunteered for him in the past - what the hell should I say?

I also have some doubts about the quality of his reports, based on my first-hand experience of the quality of his volunteers. But I don't want to allow my personal experience to cloud my professional judgement on this.

I'd love to shoot him down in flames and tell him how utterly unprofessionally he behaved, and how dare he try and jeopardize my career like that. But I know I can't.

What Would you wise MNers do?

Surely you don't have to elaborate that much. Just say you did some volunteering 15 years ago and leave it at that. There is no need to go in to specifics.

Thanks for your replies,

Well I've spent a week working with MrX. I was SO nervous on the first day, but it was absolutely fine. He didn't indicate that he knew me at all, and didn't ask about my background. I was pleasant and polite with him throughout (whilst shooting daggers at him in my head).

I feel so much better to have finally come face-to-face, and got over, someone who I have built up as a hate figure for so long. It dawned on me (I mean it's obvious really, but felt good to say this out loud in my head) that all this time I've spent worrying, and being upset, and going over and over the story of what this man did - that the only person I have hurt is myself. He's spent all that time completely oblivious and unaffected. I realize it's time to move on.

I have a stock answer prepared in case he asks me about my background, and I won't elaborate. I'll just answer and move on.

This week however has strengthened my concerns about this man's practices around volunteers. All of the volunteers were young (under 25), 95% female, and foreign. They have all been staying at his house this week while they work with him. This isn't really my business to comment on though, just adds to the creepiness and inappropriateness of the man.

The quality of work from the volunteers was poor. They were woefully inadequately trained, and some turned up very poorly prepared in terms of clothing and food provisions, to the point that I worried about the health and safety of some of them. Mr X had clearly not prepared them for the work involved, the length of time we would be at work, or what they should wear.

They often didn't know what to do, or how to do it, and relied on Mr X popping out to correct them if they did anything wrong - clearly no robust training has gone on.

These are people who, as from this week, we have contracted to carry out a piece of work for us. The quality of work was very poor.

My boss, and John, both saw everything that I saw. Plu you asked what John was like, and whether I could get him on side. He's lovely, and is completely aware of their shortcomings. However, both he and my Boss both seem to be laid back about it and of the opinion that, while Mr X's treatment of volunteers is crap, it's just 'how he is' and that's that.

There were a number of occasions where John had to tell one particular volunteer to put her safety hat back on (we are working around dangerous machinery), and she refused, then complied before petulantly removing it again (she was, I might add, a grown woman not a child). This happened 3 times, and in the end, she just refused to wear it. I was shocked, and I did suggest to John that at the very least he ought to raise this with Mr X to tell his volunteers that when they're working with us, they must follow our instructions. My boss just said "Oh, you always get one silly volunteer, the rest were fine"and "Oh they were new, they had a lot to take in"....

So what to do - I don't want to come across as constantly critical and negative, as I think this will piss people off and make me look bad. However, I am worried about how these people's behaviour will reflect on us, and more importantly, about their health and safety and our legal responsibility for that.

I might make some enquiries as to our responsibility - if we contract someone to do some work, check their H&S policy, and their public liability insurance... then if the contractor then goes on to poorly supervise or train his volunteers leading to an accident - are we liable, or is he?

That approach to liability sounds a good one, and a safe one, especially if you CC your boss in on the enquiry (draft first, so you"re not co-opting him/ stepping on his toes).

It seems to me that if you don't warn Mr X, accidents might be considered your organisation's fault, whereas if you do formally warn him, it's his.

Also, are there any benchmarks in the contract which might allow termination, for poor practices leading to useless output?

Sorry, my phone ran out of battery!

Your boss and John don't actually sound all that lovely tbh; they sound far too complacent about the poor quality and dangerous practices.

Stay honest to yourself - you are more caring and moral than any of the others involved, and you are right - but do be careful and document whst you're doing, so no-one can shaft you for exposing their complacency or wrongdoing.

That all sounds pessimistic, but you have every chance to get through this well!

Thank you plu

I think what I'll do is suggest we contact Mr X with a revised risk assessment prior to him commencing the work. This would be justified because we did pick up on the poor quality of his own risk assessment when evaluating his contract, and have documented comments about it. So I could suggest we send him a new one with examples of good practice, and I'll suggest to my boss and John that they use that as an opportunity to highlight to him some of our concerns over the volunteers.

That way, it comes across as trying to be helpful rather than critical, and covers us should anything happen. It also lets Mr X know that we won't turn a blind eye to this shoddy behaviour.

Funny how this thread started with me worrying about a personal issue based on a nasty experience years ago, and now it's turned into a genuinely sensible concern over good practice and my personal issue is no longer the problem!

There you go! What a great redemption of your earlier experience.

You don't muck about with health and safety. I've worked on building sites in the past and around machinery and the rule is no hat = no work, and no pay as well. I've had a hard hat save me from at a minimum severe concussion and at worst, I could have fractured my skull.