MySQL Grant Problem

[Griff]

I'm automating the creation of mysql accounts through php. I'd rather not involve the root user when creating these accounts so I created an 'employee' account to do this for me. The main job of this acct is to grant access to tables under a specific database. It has the global grant priviledge and all priviledges on the specific database and tables associated with that database however when I try to create a user acct I receive the following error : "You are not allowed to create a user with GRANT". Seems obvious that I simply don't have grant priviledges but everything I look at tells me I do. Any ideas?

Thanks,
Griff