My husband was interviewing for a Sales Manager role at a local radio station. The owner put him through four interviews over the course of a month before finally making him an offer. He was hired to be the person in charge of the sales team, he was given a salary plus bonuses based on his own sales and the collective of those of his team.
For the first three months, he was thriving. He was going above and beyond the goals, he was motivating and educating his team in improving themselves so well that they were also exceeding their goals. He had tons of connections in the community and was constantly generating new leads, new interest.
Right out the gate, he was making the highest bonuses possible for his performance. The numbers showed how he was going above and beyond in how he and his sales team were performing.
You'd think this would have made the owner happy. It did just the opposite. And things began to go downhill from there.
He came to my husband about the fourth month in and was literally complaining that he was doing so well and was earning the highest bonuses; he hadn't expected that. The owner made it clear he didn't enjoy paying him the bonuses because he kept achieving them. The owner began making statements that he was going to change the bonus structure since he was earning the highest one so well, because he hadn't counted on having to pay out those bonuses.
So right away: they wanted to bait-and-switch an important part of the reason he agreed to the job, and had been busting his ass to attain.
From here, the manager started getting shittier and shittier to him. Nit-picking everything he could find, going behind his back to undermine him at every turn… my husband had no choice but to record their every conversation and get as much as he could in writing, because this dickhead was going out of his way to gaslight him… saying one thing, giving one instruction, claiming later he didn't say it and trying to be mad at my husband for doing exactly what he'd been told to do. This dickhead also did all he could to triangulate people in different departments to get pissed off at my husband over things that weren't even his responsibility. And then the snide, smartass, unprofessional text messaging at all hours of the night began.
He finally had to go to HR and ask for some kind of intervention because this dude had escalated his shit starting to the point that he was acting like he wanted to provoke a fight, and shit was out of control.
Of course… HR is NOT your friend.
A week after the meeting, the owner met with my husband and said that he was taking away his role. He literally said, I thought I wanted to hire a Sales Manager, but I changed my mind. I am the only one who is going to be managing things around here.
So my husband was immediately demoted to a regular salesman. No more salary. 100% commission. He could take it, or he could quit.
Unfortunately, my husband didn't sign a contract when he went in, or he wasn't offered one. So there wasn't anything to stop this.
What in the actual fuck has this world come to?