So this has been a long time coming for a while now. I left a toxic department in my previous workplace just to walk right into another one. Bad luck, but I'm not going to lose hope.
I spent almost a year at this new place, and at several points my line manager and the head of my department have had problems with me.
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Someone passed away in my family and I needed a day off to grieve, and their response “It's a Monday, days off on Mondays are frowned upon”
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I get a headache and choose to avail a sick leave: “We work from home during our sick leaves and just btw we don't think your headache is that bad”
After these initial interactions I kept a professional distance with these two people despite their many attempts to get to know me personally and probe into my personal life. Based on my previous workplace experience I knew that any personal information given up would be used as ammo later.
My line manager wouldn't even care to see if I'd received an email from our Client Services team on several occasions, and would immediately start questioning me on what I understand from the email itself. Obviously I'd be visibly confused and he would shrug me off as a weak subordinate with his facial expressions alone.
After this point we had probably one or two altercations. But eventually there came a point where I stopped receiving work and was barely involved in projects despite getting compliments on my work in the past and knowing my stuff. In the most recent project I was ready to present to one of our clients and barely got 2 slides in before being completely cut off by my line manager without an explanation.
These guys eventually gave me a terrible performance review which made its way to upper management.
Eventually the CEO stopped greeting me the same way anymore and I could tell something was up. I would have honestly resigned weeks ago had I not needed to complete the full one year to avoid being seen as a job-hopper.
(For context, I'm 25 and never really completed a full year of work anywhere due to consecutive toxic work environments)
Well, imagine my surprise when I get a call telling me to come down to HR and I see my bosses sitting in the room. They try to act as if they're saints and and take the high road, telling me excuses like they can't justify my appraisal since I was due for one so it's best to cut ties.
I figured this is the best place to vent and get rid of a bit of this hurt.