TLDR: Management split my team in half, implemented a new grading system, 3 out of 5 of my team members already quit, and now management is coming down on me for speaking up.
Backstory: I work in Digital Content for a big supply company’s online marketplace and last October, 5 members of my team were split off to work data entry for new items. This was a small responsibility that the whole team used to work on, pairs of us taking one day off a week to do it instead of doing our normal jobs (taking requests from the business folks called ‘buyers’ to make all kinds of updates across the site, something new every day). The idea was that us 5 would do data entry under a brand new manager and take on projects to update old items to improve the site and break up the monotony.
It wasn’t even a month before the 5 of us were alienated and overwhelmed. New items poured in consistently in record numbers, and we were not allowed to get help from the other half of team. Soon enough we had no time to do anything but data entry. We started speaking up to our new manager, but she didn’t have the say to make any real changes like getting more help or re-merging the team.
We suffered the monotonous workload until I left for 3 months in January for military leave. I come back in April and lo-and-behold things have only gotten worse. A new department manager was moved in who implemented a quality and quantity tracking system that graded you against how many items you entered data for and how many edits the review team sent back to you. Edits were always a thing, but now they counted against your yearly raise and bonus at the end of the year. And if you had one low month a PIP would automatically be filed against you.
One person had already quit over it. After two weeks it was clear to me how subjective the edits were based on who reviewed your items. I learned that no one wanted to speak out when I left for fear of retaliation from management. I’m young and don’t have a family or much to lose, so I started collecting the grievances from my 3 remaining team members. I asked for an hour long meeting with my immediate manager to discuss our grievances. We don’t have an HR department for some unknown reason so it was the only recourse I saw.
Meeting was rough but she seemed receptive. Two weeks later during my 1 on 1 review she told me the department manager received an official report against me that I had a verbal argument with a coworker over an edit. This shocked me because it didn’t happen, and everyone on my team knows I don’t disrespect people like that. My manager told me I had to ‘fix my attitude’ or be faced with punishment. I told my team I was going to lay low for awhile.
Fun side story: Summer training for the national guard comes around, and while I don’t have orders, my unit calls me in for 3 days to help. Under the old department manager I got unpaid time off whenever my unit needed me, but my the new department manager says I have to use my PTO instead because it fell during the week. I was flabbergasted but rolled over because it had only been a month since my warning.
Now it’s August and 2 other team members quit, citing the grading system for their reason. We haven’t been able to refill the team because they fired 1 of 2 new hires for having too many edits. Last week I met with the department manager and she asked me why people are quitting. I gave the honest answer that the grading system was the specific reason.
Me and the other original team member had reviews this week and are burned out and sinking. I was told today by my manager that ‘it might be time to make that hard decision to see if I really want to work here’ because of my attitude, and now I think they’re building a case to fire me even though I’m still getting passing grades. We have no HR people to go to and I don’t know what to do.
First Reddit post in a long time, sorry if I missed any etiquette