Part 5: Medication Mike’s Lost Career
by Jimmy Vaughn

I simply had to land another job and soon! I had just blown a dream job and my student loan repayment would begin soon. I wasn’t happy to be back at home with my parents although it did provide room and board. I thought I would scream if I had heard again, “what did you go to college for if all you plan to do is lie around the house and stay out with your old college buddies all night?”

Getting another job was harder than I thought it would be. Everyone wanted a person with work experience which I had just blown by losing my first job. My experience was living the college life. If I wasn’t in class I had been playing intramural sports or hanging at the Frat house. But the lack of work experience is not the only challenge I dealt with. There were also those moments of indiscretion. I was always unsure if I should check the yes box when it asked if I had been convicted of a felony, I mean would they really know whether or not I told them the truth? And when they asked me what social networking sites I used, I had no idea the impact it would have on me.

I finally did it though. It wasn’t my dream job, but was a job and at the end of my ninety-day probation I would get a good raise and my benefits would kick in. Till then I just needed to keep my head down and figure out how to best climb this corporate ladder as high and as fast as possible.

The day of my ninety-day evaluation I met with the Human Recourses Department just before I clocked out for the day. I had worked really hard and hoped to get a nice little raise that would let me finally get my own place and meet my bills.

I must admit, I was a little nervous when my boss walked through the waiting room and I didn’t know he would be in the meeting too. When they finally called me back we were seated at a round table with my boss and Jeff, the Human Resources Director. Jeff started a tape recorder and told me this is was standard for accountability. He told me that my work had been exceptionable. I had been on time, my boss and co-workers liked me, and when it come to the work, I was, “good to go”. But then he went on to say that when I was hired I gave them permission to investigate me and that the results of that investigation would be taken into account at my evaluation. I swallowed hard because I knew there were things that I did not want them to find out.

He said that through my social networking site they discovered that I had participated in things that were not acceptable to the company in keeping with its personal conduct expectations and that a criminal background check revealed my record and that I did not answer truthfully on the original application which was a violation of the companies personal integrity policy and that these would disqualify me from working for them any longer. They asked me for my I.D badge and had security escort me to my cubical to collect my personal belongings before being walked to my car. My high hopes had become depths of despair.

Jimmy Vaughn, Pastor of Authentic life Fellowship, serves on the DFG Public Education Committee