I would like to share my thoughts:

I work for the City of New York in a Retirement System. My current title is a Correspondence Specialist. I was just promoted to this job in November of 2006. My last job, was as an Office Assistant in another division. At this new job, I am on a 6 month probation period.

My new job mostly consist of answering inquiries from members in a business writing format. Although I am not new to writing a business letter, I felt I needed some catching up and to also understand  the training I had played a role in writing the content of the letter. In addition, all of the other English that is normally required, such as puncuntation, spelling, grammar and word usage.

For the month of December I did a few letters just to get my feet wet. My manager had explained to me that it would take time to get used to the writing. And December is normally a tough month because people are away during the holidays and thus I was out for a couple days (due to outside training) and I was off the last week. So whatever letters I did do was not counted. Management decided that for the first 2 or 3 months of year (January, February and March?) the letters that were done were not held againist me in any way. Well, at least I thought.

After January' s production was over. My manager called me in privately and told me that my grammar, spelling and puncutuation was not good at all and my attention to detail was poor. She had went on to say that she and the ass' t manager will not take the time to teach me the basics of English. That is something that I should already. She had shown me some of the copies of letters which had the errors on them and  noted that  although I am new to learning structure, but this is not acceptable. One point she made was that the first line of the letter had to be that title of agency to be written out fully, then place the abbrevation in parenthsis ().  For example, Department of City and Administrative Services abbreviated is (DCAS). The point she wanted to make was that  was omitting that part of the letter and that is a core element to all the letters. They all had to be written out like that. From that day forward I was made aware of it. However, because my manager didn' t like it, she issued me a verbal warning. So I said Ok. I will try to do  better.

So February has come an gone and  for February' s production she felt she didn' t  see any improvement. What she was focused on the errors that were still present. She did not have all of the error letters in her hand, it was just a few and they were minor in nature. What she failed to acknowledge or mention for that matter that the title which she made an important point on for the prior month was present on all of the letters. That is an improvement. It is not to say that I should get rewarded for it  but that should' ve been observed. Because she felt there was no SIGNIFICANT improvement she issued me a WRITTEN WARNING.

One thing she added that I thought was weird for her to say was, that she had to "accomodate" for someone. There is another young lady that  was hired right at the time I was. It just so happens that her father works in the agency so she got a job the same time I did.  What does this have to do with my situation? I think because they hired the other girl, they will give her more letters to do and give her more of the juicy ones whereas, still I get forms to fill out and a few letters here and there.

In the end, I thought I should' ve been warranted the full 6 month period. If there had to be any talks it could' ve waited until a minimum of 90 days if my manager felt there was something that needed to  be discussed. It was clear in the beginning that she said, it would take time to get adjusted. Why after one full month of production I had to get a warning. She has not spoken with anyone else privately about their grammar, spelling and so forth.  I don' t really believe that the other people in the dept do so much better (although there are a few that have been in the division for 5 years). Anyway, after the second warning she wrote it for record purposes that if I did not improve then a FINAL WARNING would be issued and there would be the option of transferring to another department. I just think she is following protocol to get me out.

This story is way too long and it bothers me.

P.S. I might as well be honest and say that this e-mail may not be written to the best of it' s ability either, but I tried.

My manager spoke to the Deputy Director of the division and although my manager had written on the warning that if I did not improve that I would seek other opportunities in agency, the D.D. omitted(white out) that part out of the warning. My manager showed it to me and said, don' t think anything about it.  As of now. I am being cross-trained in another division. I being played musical chairs here and it' s driving me a little nutz!