A few years before the pandemic, I started out with this local company in a temporary position. My supervisor liked my work and later offered me a more permanent position under the same department. First few weeks went well but then this person gradually became a really bad manager. My manager would give contradicting messages. In general they would say, “just ask me if you need anything” but then one day, when I asked my manager that my work computer needs ms excel so I can do the work more efficiently they said, “I don't need it, just use google sheets.” The way I got around that was I knew the person handling the updates for our work laptops, so I just asked that person to install ms office on my laptop, which they did. Another red flag that I missed was, when we still had a good working relationship my manager shared with me that if they got paid for it well, they would totally be a union buster! WTF. Another troubling situation was when the manager literally told me “to not find innovative or efficient ways to do my job but to do my tasks as is” without giving me an explanation as to why. Probably the worst experience was when he told me that I needed to come up with a project plan and he would go through draft after draft telling me what was bad but not giving any example as to what they were looking for. Things got so bad that while I was working, the manager would casually say to me that there could be other jobs that I can apply for at other companies. Of course, the manager did not know anyone from those companies. And then the final straw was a performance evaluation meeting with my manager, where it was agreed that if I didn't meet new (unattainable) benchmarks then I would be fired. I know now that the manager was trying to get me to resign. At the time, I thought that if I resigned, I would not be able to collect unemployment, so I stayed on knowing that I would be fired at my next performance evaluation. I thought, I might as well get paid for as much as time as I could and then apply for unemployment when I was terminated. On the day of the final performance evaluation, the manager and I had a final meeting, I apologized for not meeting the benchmark that were set but to my surprise they told me that another manager in the same company was willing to bring me into their department although there would be a pay decrease. I agreed. I ended up thriving in the new department and my new manager was way better. Interestingly, my old manager was later let go because my old manager got into a shouting match with my new manager. And then finally, when my old manager's job was vacant for a couple years since their departure, I decided to apply for it. And guess what, I am now the director of the department. LOL. I don't know how long I will last in this company, but I need to celebrate my small worker victories when I can.