Complaint Review: Vision Property Management - Columbia South Carolina

I was an employee for 4 years, and provided excellent services with a spotless record. I received multiple awards from the company for innovative ideas and great service. I also had significant positive relationships with the vendors and contractors who provided services to this company, and received multiple compliments from same.  

Approximately 3 years into my employment, a young man (24) was appointed manager of operations, my department. He pushed my friend and colleague, an older female, out of the assistant manager position. He desired his recently hired young male friend (29) to be assistant manager instead. This young male assistant had no previous knowledge or education in property management, nor operations. He had a bad habit of taking credit for other's work, and talking a good game to upper management (all of whom are younger males, less than 35 years of age). This assistant accused me of lying and performing my duties in error during a meeting of the department. I responded by saying, in a loud voice, "I most certainly am not lying, and if you bothered to check your facts, you'll see I am correct." I was written up for "yelling at my supervisor". Fast forward to the following year, after 3 months of no management, another young man (26) with no education or previous experience in management/operations was given a Vice President position over operations. Several weeks later, there was a public meeting that included 5 members of my team that occurred on a Monday. On the following Friday, I was written up for "being rude and unprofessional". The newly promoted VP, who had no education or previous management experience, much less operation experience, was not able to provide any details of how I was rude and unprofessional, not even specific words or gestures. After speaking with the other 5 members, none could provide me/him with specifics indicating that I was rude AT ALL, much less specifically to this VP. The bottom line was that the other attendees had no recollection of me being rude, confrontational, or unprofessional in any context.

By the following Tuesday, I was terminated. The Chief of Staff, who was in the "meeting' where I was terminated, indicated that he "was tired of my attitude and had spoken to me before about it". I would like to mention that the writeup for "yelling at my supervisor" never included this individual, be it attending the write up or signing the form. This goes double for the writeup of me being rude and unprofessional the preceding week. The fact that this Chief of Staff was convicted of having sex with a minor and that I had disseminated this information to coworkers and friends was the real reason behind my termination. The fact that was multiple years his senior may have had something to do with it, but it is my opinion, backed up by more than 10 other people in the same company, that it was my diseeminating his previous conviction for having sex with a minor that was the tipping point.

In addition, said Chief of Staff made sure that I would be unable to claim unemployment benefits by stating that I was a "negative influence on the business". It is strange, disturbing, and frankly unprofessional to fire someone for educating others on TRUE, factual, and proveable information, regardless of the information. I would like to mention at this juncture that I did not use company time or resources to forward said information. All communication occurred off the clock via my personal cell phone. In hindsight, it is unfortunate that several of the people I communicated with had a closer relationship to the Chief of Staff than myself, despite said Chief of Staff hiring my personally 4 years previously.

The same company has been in the NY Times for it's negative business practices. It may be interesting to note that the Chief Compliance Officer is a disbarred attorney as well as the Chief of Staff being a convicted sex offender (with a minor!!). The NY Times article (Search NY TImes + Vision Property Management) was primarily focused on the business practices of Vision Property Management, and how it is displaying predatory business practices that are not legal in most states. From my own experience, the company purchases dilapidated and unsafe homes for pennies on the dollar, and attempts to "lease" them for thousands more (buying a $5k home to lease for $70k) to poorer families who cannot afford to rehabiliate the homes to a standard of habitability per local requirements. Most of the homes in question are condemned by their local governments, yet Vision still attempts to sell these unlivable homes. Additionally, there is an entire division within the company that evicts people from these homes, which are then resold to other gullible people. Sometimes, the same home is sold, evicted and sold again multiple times, yet is never brought to a habitable state!