update from the reader whose former VP was accusing her of causing a spam influx

by Alison Green on December 21, 2013

Remember the reader whose former VP (at a job she’d recently left) was accusing her of causing a spam influx on her computer? Here’s the update.

Thanks so much to your commenters for giving me such awesome advice. As far has how it’s turned out, it’s been blessedly boring, in that I took everyone’s advice to do nothing, and indeed, nothing has happened. I’m happy at my current job, and things are great overall.

Your advice and everyone’s responses to the post were totally spot-on, and reading everyone’s responses helped me feel much more comfortable about not taking my mentor’s advice, and just opting to ignore the whole thing. (I love my mentor and he always gives me really solid, good career advice, but in this one instance, I think he took it more seriously than it needed to be taken. Being accused of cybercrime is scary, but as you and the lovely commenters at AskAManager said, anyone who had a competent level of knowledge of computers and the interwebs would see that it was totally nuts.)

The VP I wrote about continues to be B-A-N-A-N-A-S from what I hear from my friends who still work there. She moved on from a haxoring witch hunt to accuse another manager and some employees of concocting a nefarious scheme of internal sabotage! It’s probably likely that she’ll move on from that to the next thing in a month or so. I think it’s just an aspect of her personality that I never got much exposure to while I was there since I didn’t work under her.

You may also like:
{ 8 comments }

{ 8 comments… read them below }

  1. Anonymous*

    To the writer of this update: you got that stupid b-a-n-a-n-a-s song stuck in my head and I am not happy about this

  2. Ruffingit*

    The VP sounds mentally ill, honestly. Very paranoid. I’d almost feel sorry for her except that her problems are wrecking havoc on the lives of others. Hope she gets ousted and/or gets some help for her obvious issues and I’m glad you were able to move past this.

    1. Not So NewReader*

      Ditto from me, OP.

      This woman either enjoys a crisis because it gives her energy to go through the day so she hops from one crisis to another or she is having her own meltdown of some sort.
      It would not surprise me to find out she is doing something nefarious herself. We tend to perceive people to be similar to our own selves.

      I am glad everything settled down for you!

      2. Ruffingit*

        So true that we perceive people to be similar to ourselves. I’ve often said to others that it is not do unto others as you would have done unto you, it’s do unto others as THEY would have done unto themselves. In other words, people are different in what they want/need/feel.

        In any case, this woman clearly has some kind of problem and I would hate to be working anywhere near her. I’m more of a let’s go to work, gets things done, and leave for the comfort of home type of person. I abhor drama and chaos. It just doesn’t work for my life so having someone manufacturing it would be intensely irritating and difficult for me.

  3. Bea W*

    I dated a guy who would accuse me of being responsible any time he had an increase in spam. His paranoia about being tracked, hacked, and other not-so-nice things turned out to be mostly projection. He and this VP would make an excellent pair.

    1. Ruffingit*

      UGH. I had a professor once who was paranoid about things his students were saying about/doing to him the point of it being really bizarre. Can’t imagine dating someone like that.

  4. IronMaiden*

    My father in law had the thought that talking to my friend, whose son writes a left leaning/green blog would bring him (FIL) to the attention of the authorities. He was very abusive towards my friend.

Comments are closed.