This happened at a previous job that I ended up leaving because the environment was so toxic. Wanted to make this post because sometimes it isn't work in general that sucks, just the company and mainly the people who have risen to positions of authority through cronyisitic “Yes man” approaches to dealing with upper management.
Bad managers fuel degradation of the product or service and overtime i have watched companies fail by letting these B and C grade employees rise through the ranks. It happens for many reasons. Spending all their time micro-managing non-issues while being oblivious to bigger systemic problems erodes employee moral.
Story time: Granted I was working in a clean room when my coworker witnessed me drop a tool. It happens and we have a procedure for cleaning tools that touch the floor.
An engineer who was gunning for a management position confronted me directly, asking me about dropping the tool – I had been ratted out.
This all happened when I was under a lot of pressure for suggesting we have a manager of the clean room, since we didn't have one and I was having to take a lot of time out of my normal duties to play the role – such as research cleanroom materials, manage inventory, even train other clean room techs. I had a lot of people watching me and apparently waiting for me to make mistakes…
I also unfortunately made the big mistake of suggesting the idea of “Power to the People” and provide basic math education such as how to use Pi to immigrant workers to calculate circumference which was part of daily operations. I ended up getting into a single heated argument with another engineer about this, and first said engineer just happened to be in the same room. It was the ultimate downfall.
I heard rumors getting back to me that I was going to bring a gun into work. Which was insane because if anyone actually knew me that is so far away from who I am. Have no idea who started that rumor about me.
I was called in to HR and they told me I was getting suspended for 2 weeks because they didn't think I was fit to work in the cleanroom. They mentioned dropping the tool and also promoting the idea of teaching math to the immigrants. I thankfully took my time off and met with other employers.
To my credit I did return, and who was my new boss? The very engineer who confronted me about dropping the tool – he had been promoted. I stayed for a bit, but when it became clear that things were getting even worse I promptly quit.
In good old fashioned karma, I kept relations with my former engineer colleagues and many of them left. They hated the toxic work environment with all the snitching and gossiping. Many of the engineers actually left and started their own company.
So much more to say, and sadly this isn't the only company this has happened at. Know this, there are people you work with who can't be trusted and will tell on you to make themselves look better. Sad thing is that snitches often get rewarded, and while it helps their career ends up making everyone else feel powerless.
There are lots of books and conferences to teach people how to run great companies, but my experience is that they are the exception and most are full self-serving non-empathetic individuals.