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Antiwork

Bad Managers Ruin Good Jobs

4 years and 3 months in IT support for a medium to large company. It was great to start with, great manager, great team, I even took on more responsibility and was given a new title and a 10% pay raise in my second year. But since Covid the only other person in my position was laid off and all responsibility was on me for a year (received a nice 10% raise without having to ask and a bonus, but also put in more hours and overtime than anyone in the company). ​ During that time my previous manager moved departments and I had no manager for nearly a year and a half. Eventually got a new second who I like and is a pretty fast learner. Then a new manager who couldn't take the job and quit after about 2 weeks (I may have gotten fed up with him…


4 years and 3 months in IT support for a medium to large company.

It was great to start with, great manager, great team, I even took on more responsibility and was given a new title and a 10% pay raise in my second year. But since Covid the only other person in my position was laid off and all responsibility was on me for a year (received a nice 10% raise without having to ask and a bonus, but also put in more hours and overtime than anyone in the company).

During that time my previous manager moved departments and I had no manager for nearly a year and a half. Eventually got a new second who I like and is a pretty fast learner. Then a new manager who couldn't take the job and quit after about 2 weeks (I may have gotten fed up with him one day and went off on him for making more work for me instead of less).

We got another new manager about 6 months ago who has been ok (will get into it shortly), and we hired another support person to assist who is great to work with and though not super techy is learning really fast.

Finally this years raise has been a complete joke when compared to previous and inflation (3% when we have over 5% inflation here in Canada), and was provided in a “Performance Review” where I the most productive person on the team was labeled as 3/5 by the new manager who had been here 3 months at the time. Since this day I've been applying to other jobs.

Last week I called in sick Thursday-Friday as I didn't feel up to working and on the following Monday manager scheduled a 1on1 meeting with me in regard to my taking sick days (I use all my sick days every year, and manager was worried about the “trend”) and tried to say my using my sick days would stop him being able to suggest me for advancement and that he wanted an “open conversation about my taking so many sick days” which I saw as an obvious trap. The kicker was that he said that “The team sees you as a leader” but

I gave him nothing in the meeting essentially saying that it was related to health problems connected to my bad back, and that I'm not going to work when I'm not feeling well. Another thing brought up in the meeting was that I take the second half of the day remote too often and that I'm “Abusing a perk of the job”, I just said I'd do it less.

In the end I screen/audio recorded the meeting in OBS without his knowledge (1 party consent in Ontario) and saved it to my personal Gdrive for evidence of retaliation if needed in the future.

Really bothers me how a bad manager can ruin a good job. I was honestly happier with no manager.

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