I had been with the company for five years, in my most recent position for a year and a half. I had a very difficult, demanding, time consuming role in the company, but I was great at it – everyone has always validated that for me.
My direct supervisor (Laurie in this story) has been with the company for a decade. She is in her 40s but very much has a Mean Girls, high school drama attitude. She is exceptional at what she does, but her mouth has a habit of spewing hateful nonsense and gossip. On a good day, she was dare I say enjoyable, on a bad day she was a nightmare.
I won’t hash it out too much here but I ended up feeling like I was in an abusive situation, constantly walking on eggshells, knowing she was talking poorly of me behind my back, it was taking a toll on me. I am NOT the first person she has done this to, and I did have a recorded problem with her telling my colleague that I wouldn’t advance in my role – which very clearly made her retaliate against me even more.
On Friday, she kept pushing my buttons all day until I decided that I wanted out of the department. In this company, you are ALWAYS allowed to go back to the entry level position if you are not happy in the higher level departments, so I emailed mine and Laurie’s manager (the owner of the company) and HR to file a complaint and ask to be moved out of the department. They made me sit on this all weekend and asked me to take today off so they could have a manager’s meeting.
The HR lady, who I used to really admire, called me to inform me that they were “accepting [my] resignation”. When I asked why I wasn’t allowed to go back to the entry level department, I was told “that’s not how that works” despite that having been an open offer previously.
When I mentioned that, she said that I would still be exposed to Laurie in that department (which I would not unless she sought me out). They gave me two weeks severance.
Their big deal was that, they claim they were always open to handling situations like this, but I told them that , historically, any time anyone has spoken up about her, she retaliates, spreads office gossip, etc. I was literally told, “if you don’t feel that the culture here is where you feel comfortable reporting something, you probably shouldn’t be working here”. I wish I had asked her what she would have done if I just reported it without asking to be moved, because it was not being handled appropriately today.
I gave her a guilt trip, if there’s any kind of empathy left in that person, I hope she has a hard time sleeping tonight. I asked why I was being punished for being a victim of someone’s harassment, and I was told, again, that they were just accepting my resignation – shitty HR lingo.
Anyway – it’s a hidden blessing because I am about to start a family and wanted to scale back career mode. Not worth it anymore, especially when lower effort jobs are paying a living wage. Don’t ever pour your heart and soul in to a company who would literally drop you like a dead horse to protect a vile bully.