Pretty much what the title states. I've been accepted to a handful of grad school programs in my field and am planning on starting at 1 this fall. I had talked to two of my coworkers about it, but had not told my boss yet because I have not yet enrolled in a program so at this moment I'm not “going” until I do.
I found out via text from one of my two coworkers that I had spoken to about my grad school acceptance that my boss knew about my grad school plans and then immediately got an email from my boss asking for me to meet in her office in half an hour.
In our meeting she immediately talked about how she had been disappointed in my performance for the last month and that she was recently informed that I had “accepted a position at a grad school” she then painted this picture that I was not a good fit. She told me my two options were two either resign (which she then monologued for about 5 minutes how this would be the right choice), or alternatively she would contact HR and schedule a meeting to put me on a PIP.
I then asked her where my performance was lacking to the point of being on a PIP. I reminded her that I have completed all my tasks on time and have never once missed an assignment. Her response was effectively that I don't ask for extra work to do when I'm not busy. I then asked her if she has felt this way for over a month (I've only been in this role for 2+ months now and am still technically in training) why hasn't she addressed this earlier. She didn't have a response for that question and instead reiterated my two options.
I told her I would be happy to stay in the role and take the meeting with HR. Which she seemed not pleased with. I then reiterated to her that as my supervisor that if she felt that I was not doing enough work in the role it was her responsibility to assign me more tasks to complete. She was certainly not pleased with my retort and started talking about how employees should be motivated to go above and beyond in their role and that is the expectation she has for my team. I am already very overqualified for this role and my pay certainly does not reflect that. So I have had no plans to look for extra work especially when I commute via bus 2-3 hours each day to this position.
The meeting with HR has not been scheduled yet but I imagine it'll happen at some point this week. From my understanding PIPs are just a legal formality to pave the path to terminate you disguised as a way to improve performance. Usually they're 30, 60, or 90 days in length. Fortunately I plan to quit this job in ~60 days anyway for grad school so it likely won't effect me much. If it's a 30 day PIP then I expect to be fired in a little over a months time and I'll lose out on ~4 weeks of pay, otherwise we'll see what happens.
tl;dr: my boss found out I was planning on leaving for grad school and put me on a PIP in retaliation because I don't ask for extra work to do.