Venting my frustrations

As much as I love what I do for a living, sometimes things become unpleasant.  There are all kinds of leadership-isms out there:  “10% of your people do 90% of the work”  “10% of your people cause 90% of your headaches” and so on and so forth.  I am the head of a department that has three distinctly different branches.  There are about 35 people total in the department.  I have to say that I feel fortunate that the majority of the people are good.  However, there is a severe problem with one. 

 

In a nutshell, this individual stole $1200 from their corporate credit card.  This person was still in their probationary period of employment in the civilian sector of my department and I made the decision to fire them.  If this was an active duty military member, they would have gone to jail.  As a civilian, though, this person had the right to accept the termination or resign in lieu of being fired.  This person chose to resign of their own free will rather than be fired.   That should have been the end of it.  It wasn’t.   This person has attempted to file suit against me and our commander for everything under the sun.  It has dragged on for 2 months now. 

 

I believe that a person has the right to defend themselves but there is really nothing to defend here.  This individual stole $1200, got caught and quit her job.  The accusations have been for everythingfrom violating privacy rights to racism.   So far, all the allegations have been deemed unfounded by outside investigators and the powers that be (way above my level).  The frustrating part is that I have to defend myself over and over and over again for something that is so cut and dry.  The attempts on behalf of this individual to steer all eyes away from the truth is madding.  I am finding myself discouraged and disheartened and I am tired of having to fight this hard.   

 

My boss, who is in this with me, reassures me that he has seen this kind of thing before and that the only reason why I am so frustrated is because I don’t have the same level of experience with these types of situations that he has seen over the years.  He is probably right.  But it sucks to be falsely accused nonetheless.  It’s very Shawshank.