Maybe a Blessing in Disguise?

My contract at the government agency I've called home for the last 28 months was terminated yesterday.

This is not completely surprising. While I'm not sure (and will probably never know) why this happened, I do have my suspicions.

About a month ago I found a solution to the "A referral was returned by the server" as well as "The system administrator has set policies to prevent this installation" errors that have been plaguing us on Win10 systems while trying to install some agency-written software since I first started working there. I shared this with the team and thought that was the end of it. Prior to finding the registry modification solution, we had to remove the machine from the domain, perform the installation, and then rejoin it.

Two weeks ago I got an email from my supervisor asking where I found this registry solution. "Google," was my response.

Then, yesterday morning we all received this email:

Team,

 About a month ago this solution was suggested.   While the solution below helps us to quickly resolve issues for our customers, it is a violation of security policy.

 If you are having problems installing this application or other access issues, please bring it to my attention and I will work with management on getting a resolution for you.

 All possible solutions need to be vetted by IP.

All I can figure out is that because I dared to think outside the box and find a fix (that actually reset to the group policy default after rebooting) to the problem that was not being addressed by Infrastructure Protection, I had committed that violation of security policy—evidently grounds for immediate dismissal.

Anyhow I received a couple of panicked phone calls/texts from my recruiter after I left for the day and finally got in touch with her last night around 8 pm.

Supposedly no reason was given to her for my contract termination. The manner in which this was done was also not surprising; I'd witnessed similar with other contractors. One day they're there, and the the next they're gone, followed up by a generic "So and so is no longer employed by the agency."

My biggest concern was retrieving my personal possessions. The recruiter said, "I'll coordinate to have your things returned. They don't want you back on campus." All she was concerned about was getting my access badge (like it hadn't been disabled the moment I left the building yesterday) cell phone, and laptop, so after explaining that the phone and laptop were both in my office, we agreed to meet this morning at the local Starbucks to hand off the badge and parking permit.

While waiting for her to arrive, I reached out to my colleagues and asked that they gather my stuff up. Unsurprisingly they hadn't heard of my dismissal at that point, but after verifying it with our supervisor they went through my desk and got everything together. After coordinating with my department H.R. rep, I was able to pick everything up a couple hours later.

Interestingly, yesterday morning—well ahead of any of this going down—I must've tapped into something because after them both laying dormant for the last year, I reactivated both my monster.com and my indeed.com profiles and uploaded new resumes.

I did this because I was so totally disgusted with the official reaction to solving this ongoing problem (this was not the first time a suggestion for improving a process had been shot down in spectacular fashion). I was done.

When my good friend Cindy learned of this turn of events, she extended an offer to hire me to set up her daughter's home office tech and to help her transfer years of photos from a half dozen naked hard drives onto her Mac. (Something she swears she was thinking of doing prior to any of this happening.) Needless to say, my day is booked tomorrow.