I was genuinely hoping that I wouldn't be back to post another personal story. I don't think I can even do a TL;DR simply because there's so much to unpack.
Last September I was terminated from a new job after three months. Management was upset that I wasn't spending my entire week logged onto my work computer around the clock, and that I refused to respond to unsolicited work calls directed to my personal devices after business hours.
After a few months of several odd part-time jobs, I finally landed a good paying full-time job once again, and fully remote from home as well.
Honestly, I knew from the start that I would likely be looking for a new position within a year or so anyway. For the better part of the last decade, I've been working exclusively in a business development/sales support role that focuses heavily on sales-driven copywriting, technical writing, and massive business proposal drafting. It's a field that is very fast paced, very difficult to plan for any real structure in your day, and comes with a high level of burnout and stress – all things I didn't know until I started at my first job in this particular role. I've been searching to get into a different field for a while now, but transitioning career trajectory is not always easy. The main reason I took this job when offered was because we needed the money and I needed a full time job again. Even if it wasn't ideal, it would at least be something for the time being.
It seemed like it was going well enough at first, but I started picking up on a few recurring issues before long.
First and foremost, while the rest of the team had all been with the organization for anywhere between 5 – 15 years, I learned after I was hired that there had been a history with my position in particular. I was the third or fourth person to be hired into this specific role in the space of less than a year.
Another ongoing issue was that my team leadership seemed very unwilling to answer questions about processes for some reason. Which was strange, because one particular piece of feedback I would constantly receive was: “We really encourage you to ask questions / ask for help when you need it.” But in my experience, anytime that I actually did ask a question about how to proceed with something I was unfamiliar with, it would be turned around on me with “what do you think you should do?”
I DON'T KNOW, THAT'S WHY I'M ASKING.
Even worse was when I would try to implement previous feedback and would only hear afterwards what was wrong with what I did and what I should have done instead. It was so difficult to get proactive feedback. Anything I did hear in terms of instruction seemed reactionary a majority of the time, after the project had already closed out.
I would also constantly get conflicting feedback just in terms of what I was supposed to do as far as common, everyday processes. For example, I would be told to always include a copy of CERTIFICATE X when it was referenced. Two projects later, I would be told that including a copy this time wasn't needed. Then on the next project, if I asked whether a copy of CERTIFICATE X was needed, I would be told that, “of course it is, it ALWAYS is.”
It got to the point where I was experiencing mental paralysis any time that I had to make a decision regarding what to do in my own day-to-day duties. Even after nearly a year on the job, I still experienced gut wrenching anxiety and fear any time that I had to try to decide how to proceed with something on my own, simply because there was no way of knowing what the reaction would be.
And I will admit, this was having a really bad effect the quality of my work output. I definitely was not doing my best, because I genuinely felt like I didn't know how I could, knowing that no matter what I did there would be something crucially “wrong” with it. It became difficult to even want to try anymore.
Worse yet was the expectation that none of us were allowed to have any down time, ever, with the exception of using the bathroom or taking a lunch break. But the eight hours of our workday were expected to be filled with nonstop productivity from start to end.
As anyone who has ever worked a corporate desk job will tell you, that's basically impossible. It's exceedingly rare to have an actual eight hours worth of assignments, but we do our best to stretch it out to fill the day.
But that wasn't good enough. Our team's project management software included a feature that actively tracked dates, times, and names of when an assignment was updated and who was working on it and for how long.
If you weren't actively working on something the entire day, management could see that and would reach out to ask why you weren't doing anything and why you hadn't asked for something else to do. We were expected to actually ask for more work if we were finished with our own current assignments. Rather than management utilizing the ticketing queue and delegating tasks.
Most confusing of all was in July when I had my six-month performance review. Based on what I've already written, you can expect that kind of negative feedback I received. Except…that's not what happened. Instead, my six-month review was an absolutely glowing conversation with my manager where I was told how well I was doing, how much they appreciated my willingness to learn, my eagerness to help out, and to keep doing what I was doing because I was definitely progressing along the right path.
I came away from that meeting very pleased overall, but also very confused.
Another significant challenge we would soon be facing was that our team was going to be shrinking in half from four people to two by the end of the year. This was due to other coworkers either leaving or transferring to different departments after a recent acquisition. Higher-ups claimed they were going to put out job postings to rehire some of these positions, but that was months ago and as of my leaving the company they still haven't even so much as interviewed a single person.
The final straw was when we came home from our honeymoon.
My now-wife and I just got married a few weeks ago, and it was incredible. One of the best aspects of the honeymoon trip was the fact that almost everything additional in terms of restaurants, experiences, and souvenirs was paid for with gift cards and gift money from the wedding, so it was a truly carefree experience the whole week we were away. It was the type of life event that really makes you re-evaluate your priorities after coming back to reality.
Almost immediately after returning home, the feedback from work shifted drastically. Despite the wonderful words of my previous review, I was now being told that I wasn't learning fast enough, my work quality was unacceptable, and that if I didn't pick up the pace quickly I was going to be put on a Performance Improvement Plan. I was also suddenly being asked to supply daily updates via email to my manager outlining exactly how I had spent my time at work that day. This was especially difficult since I was only assigned very minimal request tickets, was pulled off of several of my assignments, and was even booted out of other projects which I had offered to assist with. And then I was told off for not doing enough during the day and being interrogated as to why I hadn't offered to help anyone else with my downtime.
After a particularly bad day, my wife sat down with me and really set it straight. She'd noticed how bad my anxiety and stress had become the last few months, even pointing out a number of small but significant changes in my habits around the house and how I really hadn't been myself for a while. She could tell everything going on with this job was making me miserable. She also knows that, for most of the last year, I've been putting together a number of certifications, licenses, and background research in my free time to begin launching my own business from home, which is currently in a state where I can kick things off at a moment's notice. She told me point blank, “you should focus on that instead, and you need to quit.”
That was all I needed to hear.
First thing this morning, during what was supposed to be a regular one-on-one meeting with my manager, I gave my notice. Or at least, I attempted to give my notice.
According to my now-former director, the leadership at this company gets very paranoid when someone resigns and won't supply information about where they're going / what they're doing next. So out of one final act of pettiness, I received a follow-up from HR several hours later informing me that a notice period was “not necessary,” and that my final day of employment would be tomorrow. I suspect they only extended it that long because that was the earliest HR was available to conduct a virtual exit interview.
Good riddance.