I work for an Australian mining company. My job is amazing and I work with a lot of amazing people, but the industry itself is horrible. But that's another story.
My story goes like this.
My boss recently put me on a improvement probation at work. The reasons behind it were very vague, basically starting that I am not following some “company values”. No real reasons. It's complete horse shit.
I recently had a child and in a “work life balance” meeting I had with him I stated that I want to take a step back, just focus on my current role and not take on any extra work, do any over time or set goals to move up in the company so that I could focus more of my energy into my wife and child. I dont see an issue with this, but for some reason he took exception. He's the kind of person that needs to be seen like he's having an impact on all the staff below him when In reality, not one of us actually respects or likes him. He's a narcissist, a bully and does not care one bit about anyone below him. Oh, and we work massive hours with no lunch breaks.
I have worked for the company for quite some time and have been a fill in for supervisor roles and meeting when my immediate supervisor has been unavailable. I do this on top of my current role for no extra compensation. It's stressful and I do not enjoy it one bit but like a stooge I was under the impression I would get rewarded on the long run for it. Of course I didn't.
So back to the improvement plan, I asked for specific issues that prompted me to be put on this improvement plan and what I got was gaslighting and lies.
Without being too specific, one of the reasons was, I did not complete a certain task by a due date on which we had a meeting. It was mentioned also that I was told specifically multiple time to complete this task which I failed to do so. The thing is, I did complete this task before the due date, and the multiple times he was talking about were group emails to everyone on site. He then went on. To say that the meeting was three days after we actually had it to indicate that my work was late. At the time I could not remember the date of the meeting. So I just had to accept it.
There were multiple reasons he gave like this where I was made to question my own reality and upon further investigation I found out all to be lies.
There were also other vague allagations of things that I had apparently done that I have since proved I hadn't of which he has just completely ignored or twisted into his own reality.
I really want to go to HR about this, but last time I did I just got In trouble for not following the “correct chain of command”.
I'm not sure what to do and all I know is that I don't want to keep getting bullied at work. It's affecting my home life and on top of the stress of having a new born, I'm genuinely fucked up by it.
I'll probably have to just accept it and move on, I can't risk losing my job as we're a sole income family. People are assholes.