EDIT: I forgot “job” in the title.
Hey there, I'm a 27 y.o. French guy working in IT tech support. About 1,5 years ago I, big dummie, joined a company of IT service provider that presented itself as a “big family” (redflag), who offered me a 25k/year salary + full benefits: 25 payed days off, a union, healthcare, half my public transport subscription payed by the company, etc. For French standards, the salary is a bit low, especially considering I had 2 years experience in that field and two degrees: one in English language and one in IT, making me a valued workforce as I can provide tech support in both french and english (and we all know how french people are unwilling to learn foreign languages). But well, I was dumb, I took that offer as it was still a raise from my previous job.
As I said, this is an IT service provider company, which means they lend the techs they hire to other companies asking for support, during what are called “missions”. Missions can last for as quick as a week or sometimes go on for years. I had 4 missions there, they almost all went bad, except the first one (which was great).
During the second mission, I have been working as an “assistant to the senior project manager”, which is a pompous name to say I was a secretary (instead of a tech support guy). I was first required to come in the office everyday with 1h20 of public transports every morning and the same every night just to sit there and send emails. I complained so hard they finally accepted to let me work from home. During this mission, I had calls with my IT service providing company several times to discuss whether they could bring in someone else and put me somewhere else, somewhere my skills would be put to good use. Never happened, I spent the whole mission sending mails, and finished it when it was due.
Then, I went on to the third mission, in a company who had offices around the world (from Hong Kong to Quebec) but only 7 IT people for all of it. And by 7 IT people I mean 3 people for phone only support for the worldwide offices, 2 people for phone and physical support for Paris office, and 2 admins for worldwide server support.
In this company, I had to time every single one of my breaks (even lunch break) because my manager there thought I was taking more time on my breaks than my contract allowed me. As I said: he THOUGHT that, he had no proof to back it up. Also got bad looks and remarks when I started my shift exactly on time (even though I was always 10 to 20 mins early to have time for a coffee) or when I finished it also exactly on time. Got remarks when I had the audacity to not pick-up a call on my work phone after my shift but picked it up on my personal phone before hanging up when I realized it was my manager calling me asking for something for work. Got pressured into working more and more: I had to provide the workload of 2 people at all times, because I was supposed to have a colleague doing the same job as me but I never had one. Also, I got a warning because I refused to keep on providing support to a person who was literally yelling at me and calling me “empty headed f**ker”. Obviously, I contacted my HR and tried to be removed from this hell very soon (a month in). Despite 7 calls with HR, and 4 other calls with the head of HR, I was left there on my own, with only a tap on the shoulder and a nice “good luck” to cheer me up. And I forgot to mention I got no compensation for those: no bonus, no extra day off, not even a small raise to try and make me feel better. Every week, I had fights with the manager there and on two occasions we even spent a whole week without speaking a word to each other after a fight (what a great atmosphere to work in, right?) Finally got removed when the manager of that company called the HR of my company to kick me out. Amen.
Which leads to the last mission. There, I was doing exactly my job, using the skills I had learnt, putting my experience to good use. I had 5 colleagues and a manager, and all was very good, truly. The coworkers were very nice and took time to explain to me the different specific stuff of the mission, and the manager was a guy my age who used to be a tech working exactly at the desk I had taken. All good, right ?
Then we discovered in October that, starting November, the tech support team (us, 6 people) would have to take over the workload of the “meeting rooms support team” (2 people). Those 2 people were experts of the meeting rooms in that company, given they had been in there for 12 and 18 years respectively. Their workload was the daily care of 74 meeting rooms and provide support for every conference calls of the company. Which is pretty huge in itself, but even more when we discovered that we also had to become references for everything Microsoft Teams related in the company. Even more, we would officially be trained to become “Microsoft Teams Admins”.
Where does it go completely wrong though ? We were informed that, in order to learn everything Microsoft Teams related and become Microsoft Teams Admins and also learn all about the 74 meeting rooms, we would be having a single day of training. One day to learn it all. And that the 2 seniors of meeting rooms support would not be there to provide it, and that they would be leaving the company before we would have the training day. Also, we learned we wouldn't be getting any new tech guys in the team, so we would have to do the work of 6 tech guys and 2 senior meeting rooms experts, only with 6 tech guys. When I asked for a raise from 25k to 28k (which is +12%) for the occasion of one year in the company AND the amount of work we would be getting (and because I discovered a coworker of mine was payed 28k for the same amount of experience and the exact same degree in IT), I was laughed at by the HR and upper management (so the manager of the manager who was nice with me). I was told I wouldn't be getting that much money with my experience and skills anywhere, and that I was certainly not worth such a huge raise. They told me they would see what they could do in order to get me to 26k.
The same day, right when they were explaining that to me, I decided I would not be coming back the next day. 28th of October, I stopped coming in to work. Got called, got emailed, got texted. They even called my parents, lol. They stopped paying my salary but did not fire me (no idea why). As I had a bit of money on the side, I was able to live without pay and without quitting (because I wouldn't get full healthcare coverage if I had quit) until I found a new job.
And I found a new job. Working as an intern, and not a service provider, for a law firm, not very big, just the size needed to be international and still feel like you know everyone. They offered me 31k for exactly the things I had been doing over the past years. They offered me a pay that is almost a 25% raise from my previous pay. Same benefits as before. But also, there will be raises every year (generally 5%), and bonuses to come and add to the pay, which I never got from the previous company. I took the offer.
I am currently writing this at the new job. All is going well. My two colleagues are extremely nice and very chill, even during tense and stressful situations. Hope it keeps on being like this.
Keep telling your awful bosses to f*ck off, people. You deserve better.