Hi everybody. I’m a manager of a small team that works for one unit and originally reported up to two executives. I was hired during the pandemic with a relocation agreement that extended me some money to relocate over a certain time frame. However, the pandemic hit, and the company is wildly volatile. Over the last three years I have worked for two CEOs, three VPs, and two managers. And a few months ago we were entirely reorged— most of my employees had to resign and reapply, or lose their jobs. I lost one employee and they won’t let me replace him. And half our systems don’t work —we’ve lost access to all our history. Between VP2, who told me not to worry about relocating, and VP3, my relocation contract lapsed and nobody said anything about it. Until now. I go into the office as needed and travel extensively on the company’s behalf and all of my reviews have been good. But now my manager — who’s now my sole manager due to the reorg — is acting aggressive as hell.
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I held my team’s annual forecasting retreat and as part of it I invited many people that we collaborate with to join us for one team building activity and lunch. This enraged my manager. He sent me a nasty email about my doing it without authorization and demanding I produce a proposal to see if he would authorize it. I told him we do similar things every year, I had invited him before anyone else and he never responded, and there was no cost beyond what I was already paying for the retreat lunch. He then told me that I was undermining the new VP.
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About three weeks ago I was called to a meeting about expense report policy, which has changed due to the reorg. But my manager opened it with “when are you going to move?” I pushed back a bit — I don’t object to moving, but people aren’t actually in the office much, it wasn’t enough of a priority to be discussed in the last year by anyone, and I wanted to ensure that some issues we’ve been having would be addressed and I would still have the financial package to do it. He raved at me a bit about other employees allegedly abusing the remote work policy— I told him that doesn’t relate to me as technically I’m hybrid and I pay my own way to the office. My travel expenses otherwise are the same as they would be from the office. He got rather angry, told me to talk to a few people and get back to him with a timeline for moving, and also asked me if I wouldn’t rather quit. I did this over a few weeks. He hasn’t acknowledged my email setting a move date.
Some craziness happened in the middle here. A member of my team was thrown out of her office by facilities, which pointed out that we don’t have any legal agreements requiring them to house us any more due to the reorg. I was working really hard on this, and on moving her into a different office.
I also got estimates from movers and told my bosses this. But then…
- Got an email from HR and a call. They said they wanted to discuss a minor management style issue and not to lose sleep over it. Two days later my boss, HR and I had the meeting, and now they allege my team is miserable because I don’t communicate with them, and this is really serious and I need to give them a plan to address it. Even though we meet twice a week, I’m generally reachable at any time within 24 hours but usually functionally within an hour, and we also have 1:1s all the time, and it’s clear from the discussion that they don’t know anything about any of this. But it evolves into voices being raised about where I live again. My boss again asked me if I’d like to just quit and not deal with any of this.
So obviously I’m looking for another job. I’m also consulting a lawyer. I feel like I’m being targeted and I really don’t know what context I should be responding with. Any other tips, anti workers? Incidentally, the three people who held my job before me were forced out and a similar unit boss was forced out and successfully sued my boss for gender discrimination.