I worked for a company that I always felt out of place and not valued. Leaders would give me positive praise all the time, yet keep me out of their holiday parties, luncheons, certain meetings etc. It was weird because I was just below senior leaders but 2 pay grades above my peers. Anyways, I was promoted and then a year later my title “demoted” with the offer of now being salaried and having my own team. I stupidly took it and they hired a woman and the pay grade I used to be. She was awful, didn’t show up to meetings, super sensitive about everything. For example, if I slightly looked away during a conversation, she felt I was ignoring her. This went in for a year and I kept reporting it to my boss and was under the impression she was reporting it to HR. I later found out nothing was being done and immediately starting reporting all the times this woman yelled at me, sent me nasty emails, altered emails to make it look like I typed something that I didn’t. I ended up leaving and to keep me they offered me a $10,000 raise and to bump me back up to the pay grade they demoted me from.
I LEFT because Of my toxic coworker and boss and it was the BEST decision I ever made! The climax to all this…3 weeks after I left to a higher paying job, that coworker died.
Looking back I can’t believe I stayed so long. I was bullied by this woman and my boss was a micromanager who always made me feel I wasn’t good enough. My boss would flat out tell me that “you did a good job but nobody can do the job like me”…. I used to spend hours replying to my bosses endless emails because she needed to know every damn detail and minutiae.
This taught me to only be loyal to myself and that’s it!