Past year I started on a New Job. Everything was well until some point. My former boss wanted to know everything about my life outside work. I wasn't comfortable with her asking so many questions of my life.
All began with her pushing me to buy a new car, she made her driver drive me to a dealer without me knowing about it. After that, I told her that I don't want a new car. She made me feel like I was doing something bad for thinking that. Another employee revealed me that she was going to buy me the car in cash and I would pay it to her instead of the dealer. I felt some red flags here. Later she wanted me to change my class schedule. She wanted me 4 hours in the evenings in work, but two days of the week I couldn't be 4 hours because I had one class. She told me “You are going tomorrow and tell them to change your schedule for the morning”. I didn't do it because there was no schedules in morning and to get me to work for her she “promissed” that she would respect my school schedules. I ended up going only two hours at evening that two days. When I started University I began to leave at the exact exit time to go home and do university stuff; she didn't liked that. She tried to manipulate me with a scholarship of $600 that the company gave me (when I started she told me that the company will pay university the quantity that the scholarship I had didn't cover). She told me “If someone gives you something you must give them something in return, the scale must be balanced”. I was furious about it, the only condition she said was that the company would pay while I work for them. One day I arrived at 8 AM to work, and I ended up leaving at 8PM. I worked almost 12 hours with a break of 30 minutes, WITHOUT OVERTIME PAY.
The worst thing about this, is that when I resigned, I discovered that she had me as professional services, not an employee. That means that by law (where I live) she can't control when I have to work or how (thing that she did almost all the time).
She treated me like I was a servant giving me orders on things that weren't part of my job. Wanted to know about everything I do on university, I was so sick of it. Also, she overcongratulated me, it felt fake most of the times. The employees don't had lunch hours, if you were lunching and a client calls you must stop lunching and answer the call. Also you can't lunch out of the office for the same reason. One day I was doing a flyer on the computer and suddenly she put herself so close to me to “watch” the flyer. It felt so uncomfortable; she invaded my personal space. At this point I was wondering “this 70' years old lady has a crush on me?”.
I applied for a scholarship hoping I could get it and get out of there as fast as I can. Meanwhile, it was my former boss birthday party and she pushed all the employees to go. She had a high ego saying in the party “All my employees are here”, of course if she pushed us.
After months, I received the news that I got the scholarship, so I decided to resign. It was the week past her birthday. What better gift than my resign? That week she started to yell at me everyday and I couldn't take it anymore (I gave her one week notice because my proffesor recomended me and I didn't want to leave a bad impression of him). When I sent her the letter she scheduled a meeting in her office, when I got in the office she told me to get the mask off, I knew she wanted to see my reactions so I said no in a irritated way, she asked me why, I told her “Because I don't want to”. She then said “I want to thank you” (I thought she was going to say a good thing) “I want to thank you because you taught me to not be good anymore” (I laugh in my inside, “this woman is crazy?”). Then she insulted me and called me ungrateful, she was almost 2 hours talking nonsense and why I'm the most horrible person in the world for resigning. She said me that if I resign she would have to fire some employees because without me they couldn't make a deal. Also, she said that I was like “family” and she was doing it because she “appreciates”. I'm sure she was lying. No one should experience this type of enviroment, she tought he “owned” me because of a shitty $600 scholarship (that almost covers all the overtime I didn't earn because she had me as proffesional services).
If it weren't that I needed the money and that my proffesor recommended me I would have leaved the workplace without notice and never came back the same time she showed her real face.
That day I realized that everything she had done was to attach me to the company (she was the owner) and last there a lot of years, she tried but ended doing the opposite. I felt bad for my work partners, but I couldn't stay anymore. The last day I say goodbye to everyone but her (she expected that I would not resign before her awful meeting). The next weekend I got calls from her. I changed my number and delete every possible contact with her.
Several weeks later I saw my proffesor, I told him almost everything. What did my proffesor said? “YoU HaVe To UnDerStanD HeR, iT HEr BuSineSs”. I felt rage, and regretted giving a week notice for the reputation of this man. I left out some things because she would retire in 2 years and leave the company to her daugher, then it would pass to her grandson, and I didn't want to hurt her grandson future because he was a good friend and is the opposite of her (I still have comunication with him and told him why I resigned almost 3 months later).
For me this was an horrible experience that made me not want to work again.
#toxic #workplace #boss