To be clear, I’m definitely anti-bleed-and-die-for-these-assholes but I honestly don’t mind working. It’s something to do and they give me money so whatever. So I was actually kind of excited when I got a new job a few weeks ago because I like a change of scenery every so often.
Thirty minutes into my training I realized that my new boss and coworker were only telling me how difficult it is to get the resources they need to do their jobs. How headquarters randomly revoked their access to platforms, gate keeps assets, takes an average of 3-4 weeks to make a simple website change, which we have to submit a ticket for instead of having access to our CMS, stuff like that. On the first day, my boss took me aside, and whispered “do not trust anybody here, not even [only coworker on my team].” I mentally included my boss in the “Nobody” I would be trusting, because if she says something like that to me, she will say some thing like that about me.
Day one, I had no computer. Day 2, I had no computer. Day 3, they gave me an ancient loaner laptop and said my computer should be here by mid-July.
Meanwhile, the rest of my “training” has been just sitting and watching screen recordings of my boss doing stuff and all of these platforms that I still don’t have access to after three weeks. I did get to cross reference two documents to make sure that another department made all the changes they were supposed to make, but then I never heard another word about that, and I suspect that it was purely to give me something to do.
Here we are close to mid July and I still don’t have a laptop from this century or access to any of the platforms I need to do my job, and I’ve witnessed 2 inter-departmental squabbles, one obvious sexual harassment suit waiting to happen, and literally everybody I have met, ostensibly people that I will be working with cross-functionally, starts off the conversation with the same “ trying to do my job is like pulling teeth” conversation. The weirdest thing is that more than a few of them have followed that up with some version of “but I love it here, and to love it here you really need to take ownership. During orientation, they told you to “act like an owner,“ right? that’s absolutely right. Treat this place like it’s your car, not a rental car and you will probably love it. It’s a great job, I love my job, this is an amazing place to work.” With some degree of eyes darting back-and-forth and peeping over their shoulders. Some of the most bizarre shit I have ever seen in my life.
On top of all this, they really couldn’t get close to the salary I wanted, but I was really burned out at my previous job, so I went ahead and took it, with the counteroffer that I would accept the salary, as long as I could work hybrid (2 days in, 3 days out) and they would pay for a pretty pricey certification that I’ve been wanting to get. Mind you, I have worked remotely for damn near a decade, and I have gotten pretty good at it. Plus, my job is not one that I need to be on site to do, not even close. They agreed.
Today, I got a message from my boss that said “hey, I talked to my boss and HR about your hybrid situation, and they agreed, but said to remind you that things do change, and at some point you may be required to come in more days or even all days as our business changes.” I responded and said “my hybrid situation was part of my offer letter. I’ve already been working in that format. I had no idea that this would come as a surprise to them, given that I have been here three entire weeks now, and both of them had to sign off and approve my offer letter before I accepted.”
She said “oh, I know, everything is OK right now, but let’s work together to not give them a reason to change the situation, right?” What the FUCK? Trust no one, eh? Definitely not her. I did not respond.
Fortunately, I have been applying for jobs like it literally is my job, especially since I can’t, you know, do my actual job, and I have two interviews next week.
I’m just flabbergasted. I’ve been in the workforce 20 years, and I have never seen anything like this their policies, everything from random drug testing the office staff, to the language that they use, to the fact that everything has to be a PowerPoint slideshow complete with animations, just reminds me of my very first job. But, at least that job was for a massive corporation. These people are struggling to pull in $50 million a year — not profit, revenue.
I’m not real sure what the point of this post is, I have just come home every day for three weeks and have tried to wrap my mind around what the fuck is happening lol.