This Really Explains A Lot

I work for a government agency. I’ve been assigned to mentor [New Employee], which means she shadows me on all of the files I work on, and I provide as much support as possible on the files she’s working on.

One day, after she’s been working with me for two months, [New Employee] cancels a meeting to discuss one of her files with her supervisor and asks if she can talk to me about it, instead.

Me: “So, what’s going on? [File] is due pretty soon.”

New Employee: “Yeah, about that. It turns out I’m not allowed to work on that file.”

Me: “Really?”

New Employee: “Or any file.”

Me: “Wait, what?”

New Employee: “I just got a notification from the Ethics Office. They said that because my husband works for [Company we regulate] and has stock options, I can’t work on any files.”

To be clear, “can’t work on any files” means “can’t do ANYTHING.” This is really bizarre; as a government agency, we can’t have any possibility of impropriety, but that’s usually dealt with by having us recuse ourselves from working on files related to specific companies. My boss just had to recuse himself from working on a file the other day because his wife works for that company. Another coworker recused herself from a file because she’s a customer of that company’s products. That sort of thing. No one I’ve talked to has ever heard of a potential conflict of interest preventing you from working on ANYTHING.

Me: “So… what are you allowed to do?”

New Employee: “I’m allowed to keep attending training. But that’s it. Why would they have hired me if I’m not allowed to do anything?”

Me: “I have no idea.”

This was a week ago, and while [New Employee] and the head of our department are trying to get to the bottom of what’s going on, it hasn’t happened yet. Fingers crossed that they resolve this; otherwise, yeah, wouldn’t the time to notice that she can’t review files be BEFORE hiring her and spending two months training her?

Oh, and if they do resolve it, she will have lost the time she should have spent working on her files. They’ll be due very soon, and she won’t have enough time to complete them. Sometimes working for the government is exactly what I expected.