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Antiwork

Leave when you get the offer—a long-winded tale

I worked as an “open-ended contractor” for an investment company. I started with the company working on their financials and reports and about nine months in was christened with accounts payable work, in which I had zero experience or skill, but I did fairly well. The supervisor over the AP work is a micromanaging narcissist, and she'd gone through two subordinates in the year before I was given the work. We didn't get along at all because I don't do well with people who aren't accountable nor who don't have perspective. Like, I once missed a $10.43 fee and got torn a new asshole, but the next week, she made a $5600 mistake that took a lot of actual work to undo (refunding between accounts), and there was nary an “I'm sorry” when I found her mistake. I got on fabulously with everyone else at the 50-ish-person company. Some background:…


I worked as an “open-ended contractor” for an investment company. I started with the company working on their financials and reports and about nine months in was christened with accounts payable work, in which I had zero experience or skill, but I did fairly well.

The supervisor over the AP work is a micromanaging narcissist, and she'd gone through two subordinates in the year before I was given the work. We didn't get along at all because I don't do well with people who aren't accountable nor who don't have perspective. Like, I once missed a $10.43 fee and got torn a new asshole, but the next week, she made a $5600 mistake that took a lot of actual work to undo (refunding between accounts), and there was nary an “I'm sorry” when I found her mistake. I got on fabulously with everyone else at the 50-ish-person company.

Some background: the company hires on only senior management and executives. Everyone else, including my AP supervisor, is a contract employee working through a staffing agency. The supposed reason is because the contracted employees' time is just a line item expense for investors or some shit, but it's actually that the company can shitcan people at any time, not provide benefits, and generally treat employees like dogshit and not stand behind them when they come to you about being emotionally abused by their supervisor (cough, cough).

Anyhoo, I was “released” from my position in early June. It was a shock, but my supervisor had actively been doing things to try to push me out. Her boss, who I had gone to for help, was the one that actually terminated me (and made me drive 35 miles across the county to do so; I worked hybrid remote). My boss didn't have the balls to fire me, of course. Grandboss told my work friend, the accounting manager, that he had a nightmare the night before about having to fire me. Hilarious.

Reason for termination was “not enough work” despite one accountant having left about three weeks prior, a peer in another department being on maternity leave, and there being “enough work” for the CFO's daughter to be “interning.”

I'm getting to the point. About a month before I was canned, our data analyst submitted his notice; he was leaving for a big bank with a hefty raise. (All of us contractors were super underpaid.) The company would be royally fucked with him leaving, so they made some deal to get him to stay.

Three weeks after I was term'd, my friend, the accounting manager, left for a better job. This meant that both people (she and I) who were the experts on the specialized quarterly and auditing reports platform were no longer at the company. Guess who was tasked with that work, which has zero to do with data analysis?

Take the better job when you get an offer. Your workplace isn't going to get better.

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