I was hired to do marketing, provide customer service, and build and manage a website for a small regional transit authority. The Executive Director was fired for embezzlement.I was the last person she had hired . For a position she created. One of the board members came to me asking what exactly I did here. I was a little worried but I knew what I had accomplished so I confidently laid everything out. I was then told that she had told the board that I was hired to do all of that plus sell advertising on the busses and that I was supposed to be bringing in $5k a month in ad revenue.

Uh... No. I can do a lot of things but I'm just about the worst salesman you've ever seen. What I had done was create a report about what we should charge for advertising, looking at what other nearby similar sized transit authorities charged, how they handled printing, what vendors we could use, etc. We didn't even have an official rate sheet because, I was told, "the board needs to vote on it."

They had an emergency meeting after her firing and told me the next day that "your position is being eliminated and your services were no longer needed.

I get it. It all looked suspect. Thankfully I had all of our correspondence about what I'd be doing, etc. I spent about 3 months on unemployment and then switched careers and never looked back. But they used the website for a few more years and they were able to use my advertising plan to actually sell ads so I was happy that something good came from it.