Tl;dr: There's no tldr, I'm just exhausted and frustrated and this is me ranting. Feel free to ignore.
I've been working for my company for just over 2 years now. In the first 1.5 years, I was one of the (if not 'the') top performers in my team/department to the point that just after 15 months in, I was one of the 3 senior most people in my department and I was being pushed into a more leadership role. During this time, I was regularly putting in extra time (in some cases up to 12 hours a day). I wouldn't take sick/personal days and even when I did I was usually always available and was putting out fires. This was so frequent that it actually became a joke amongst my colleagues.
1.5 years later, I got the opportunity to go to grad school in a different country but finances were tough. I went to my boss and he right away increased my salary significantly. At the time he was super understanding, telling me they valued me and wanted me to work for them longer term. He said he knew grad school would be tough but they wanted me for the long run so during this time, I'd be working on smaller, relatively less intensive things so I could focus on both. I was floored and my loyalty went through the roof.
6 months into grad school, I'm struggling, yes but I'm giving it my all. Remember when he said they'll understand my situation and I will have relatively lesser workload? Well that was true for about the first 3 months.
After that, I was pushed into a more leadership role with more responsibility. This role is something I've absolutely never done before (I'm a technical person and leadership/people management doesn't come easily to me) so ofcourse I'm having trouble adjusting. Coupled with grad school, I'm working 16 hour days and compromising on my grad school for my job whenever it's needed. I had covid last week, could barely get out of bed and yet conducted a client meeting and streamlined a few other tasks. My mental health is in shambles, I almost had a breakdown yesterday. And this is while I'm constantly being critised about not getting things done and no one seems to want to help me out. I go in to meetings, get chewed out (without any feedback that I can use), go back to the drawing board, fix things, go back to the meeting, get chewed out.. you get the idea.
So last week, I go to my boss and tell him the situation and ask for unpaid time off for 2 months because I needed it really bad. He said sure let me think about it.
He called me day before yesterday and first started ranting about how he knew grad school was a bad idea even before I had started but he didn't say anything at the time.
Then yesterday he pulls me into a call with the CEO to 'try and solve my problem'. In the call, I was told how my performance was bad and that I hadn't delivered anything in the past 2 months (very conveniently forgetting the fact that while he was out of office from November to January, I was single handedly keeping one of our products running).
That was followed by another 20 mins reminding me how many favors my company had given me and how they've supported me but think there's a lack of commitment from my side.
I am livid.
Everything I've done for them, at my expense, in the first 1.5 years has been forgotten.
Everything I've done for them, in the last 3 months of 2021 has been forgotten.
The amount of effort, time and energy I've been putting in these last 3 months became invisible right around the time I asked for some time off.
Just last week, I was told (and I've been told this multiple times over the years) that I was invaluable to the company and they'd be hard pressed to find a replacement.
But the second I put myself first and refuse to work myself to death, the blame game gets started.
In the call yesterday I was constantly told how much the company had favored me and was supporting me and was looking out for me and then I was asked 'do you think commitment should be a two-way street?'.
Go to hell.
Commitment is me taking less than 5 sick days in 2 years and still working on and off when I do.
Commitment is pulling in 10 to 12 hour days without anyone asking.
Commitment is being mindful of what's needed and doing it without anyone asking since I joined.
Commitment is me taking care of YOUR employees when they're tired of YOUR bullshit and making excuses for you.
I am just done.