Hi all,
So I recently accepted a contract position for NASA in Infosec, and their allowing me to work while my clearance makes its way through the pipeline. At the time my recruiter asked if anything could interfere with getting a clearance, I honestly said no but after reading through here and online and completing my SF-86 I’m going to be honest I’m nervous.
I’ll start off by saying I understand investigators look at you as a whole person. But I’m wondering if I’m denied an interim if I’ll be screwed. So here’s my story, I’ve never done drugs, gotten arrested, have money problems, no foreign ties, and for the past 2 1/2 years I have jumped around from Internship to contract position due to being a university student. I have really really good references and have good connections with all of my employer’s expect for one and this is where my anxiety runs from. In November of last year I took a short term contract to update IT equipment for a company and the original PM and recruiter both new I was a student and cool with me leaving Thursdays for school. My coworkers were cool everything was as it should be. The PM gets switched towards the end as there was more of a aggressive approach needed and when a few of my team members got placed with this guy, my other coworkers warned me that this guy has a negative rep. Anyways, right out of the gate this guy asks for a quota of numbers we all struggled with, which frustrated him. And we all got sorta yelled at. But over all this guy voiced her anger at me most of all and more than anyone else. When I would tell him I must take off early Thursday for class, he would peer pressure me into staying and would not allow me to leave, and almost daily he would yell and schold me in public in a point to embarrass me and demean me after I would struggle to fill his “quota”. Around this time as well the person who handled the admin side for all of us contractors also began to pick on me and sorta “mess with me” in an open setting making offensive jokes in front of everyone. Between these two this made my ability to preform at my job incredibly hard and would emotionally rough me up as I was trying really hard, (I would come really early before anyone to start, skip lunch, and still would struggled to please my boss and still go yelled at) my coworkers saw this and expressed negative feelings about it, one eventually quit cause of the way this project was handled and I was on the ropes of quitting as well. I finally just called my contractor to ask for guidance and my recruiter and the CEO sat in the hear about the situation. I then learned the whole reason why they got this contract is because the CEO’s wife used to work at this company with the woman who does the admin stuff for us on this particular contract who also would basically bully me. They heard me out and literally said “we don’t wanna paint a target on your back so we don’t want to do anything but can you hold on a little longer? You are making a lot of money and we all have those managers who are like that, why don’t you and the other contractors who feels this way go and talk to him” so that did nothing. And I asked my group and no one wanted to talk to him. So I went alone and attempted to reason why him. And he basically said tough ■■■■ get the quota done no excuses. Three days later I had another disagreement with my progress after I attempted to walk him through with my process of working and when I got home my recruiter told me my “contract had been canceled” when I went to turn in my badge my recruiter expressed how she even admits that manager was messed up and to Learn from it as not all managers are right and I’m young etc etc. since then I have worked at 2 larger companies with stellar remarks from my team members, bosses, and even the CIO’s. In IT and currently at my job in cyber.
Obviously this new job I will start soon with NASA is a huge leg up, but when doing the SF-86 I reached out to the recruiter to verify what happened at this job again and to define what “contract canceled meant” and she sounded sorta disgruntled with my success and told me I was “fired”. Now I put down my reasoning on my form along with stating I have numours amounts of screenshots for proof and also reached out to all of my coworkers and all stated they were more than willing to explain how that boss was to me and how terrible that contract was. I know when the investigator will contact the recruiter and the PM they 100% will say negative things about me, but I’m just worried because this is the only bad thing about me as a person. I love working I love this domain of work but I hate this happened and I’m worried that I won’t get my interim or my clearance. I’m also worried that if I’m denied an interim my company will cancel my offer. I know there’s nothing I can do but I was just wondering what my chances are. It’s unfortunate but it just is what it is is.