Something at my job yesterday/this morning has recently gotten me really worked up and anxious, and I just need to vent.
(TL; DR at the bottom)
For context, I just recently started a new job two months ago. I'd been in my previous role for 7 years (too long), and due to some changes in management and expectations, I decided it was time to leave. Found a new job in a similar role, entirely different industry, fully remote position, and for almost double my previous salary.
All good, right?
Well, it was for the past couple of months, until last night.
Like most people here, I have established what I consider to be a pretty normal and healthy set of personal/professional boundaries: I am not available after regular business hours, do not contact me about work on my personal devices, do not share my personal contact information with coworkers without my permission. Easy enough in theory.
Currently our team is working on a fairly sizable new project. It's important to our department and the company as a whole, but at the same time our company is not involved in anything where lives are on the line or where anything would be a true “emergency”. It's just another white collar business office at the end of the day.
Around 7pm last night my phone lights up with a text message from an unknown number. When I checked, I saw it was a message from my supervisor and the company's name mentioned at a glance. This was a shock for several reasons:
1) I was being contacted about work several hours after business hours had concluded.
2) I was being contacted about a work project on a personal device
3) I had never given my personal to this person, or to any other coworkers
I deleted the text without even bothering to read it. I don't use personal devices for my work, PERIOD. Also, in my opinion, just because I work from home does NOT mean that I am always at work. I thought that would be the end of it, barring some potential small blow-back this morning when I signed in.
That's when I see in my inbox several upset emails and chats from someone else on the team, sent at 9pm my time zone, asking why I wasn't logged onto the project and working on it. Apparently the entire team apart from myself spent their night voluntarily working on project edits after business hours, and it was apparently just expected that I would do the same.
No one has yet mentioned it at all this morning, but the language that was used in these messages from last night read as being fairly hostile towards the fact that I didn't sacrifice my personal life for the company, and I can't help feeling harassed by the way these individuals behaved yesterday after hours. I've been anxious all morning as a result, and had to vent my fiance about it already to help me calm down before I panicked and did anything rash.
She's (my fiance) has already recommended that I have a short call with my manager to discuss the issue of workplace boundaries and how this blatant breach has affected me, and I agree. I just don't want to come across looking like I'm overreacting to a misunderstanding or interpreting hostility and harassment where none exists.
Not really sure if I'm looking for guidance or not, I just really needed to vent about this upsetting experience for some general support from the community.
Thanks for reading!
TL;DR – I was contacted by a coworker outside of business hours on my personal number which I had never given out, now feeling anxious and harassed by my still-new job.