TL;DR My boss gave me so much anxiety, I can never even think of working in finance again.
I wanted to get this off my chest for a while, so here goes. I have to start back in 2019, where I studied accounting for the whole year while I worked in fast food. I wanted to work in finance because I found it somewhat interesting and it could pay pretty well.
In December 2019 I landed a job at a DIY shop my dad worked at. I started out in this place as a trainee accountant as I was finishing the end of the studies. At first things were going really well. I enjoyed learning about the various processes in recording and tracking supplies and was interested to see how the things I learned I the classroom translated into a real setting.
Now my work ethic at the time was generally around taking pride in hard work and completing tasks to a high standard. I even went out of my way to help other people with small things and tried to learn from different people about their positions and how they fit into the whole business. I would often stay behind to finish tasks before going home.
Then there was the big 2 obstacles they had: their filing system was pretty much non-existent and they had no manual / procdure book. So the manager suggested I had a go at fixing that.
I spent close to 3 weeks practically rebuilding their filing system from scratch in the warehouse to cover the oast 2 years worth of financial records. I also spent time with other accountants to see how they did their job to make a guide in the manual, in case one of them was off sick and somebody else needed to do it.
All makes sense, right?
Well at the end of January the accounts department has what they called the “month end processing” where they try to compile all debts owed to and from the company and resolve whatever they can as fast as possible. This is obviously a very busy and stressful time, however it was the first time I had ever heard of such a concept and was unaware of the areas I needed to prioritise. Nobody showed me what I was supposed to be doing and nobody even mentioned when I didn't contribute (I didn't know I was supposed to do anything towards this) as they were too busy dealing with stuff themselves. I was given no direction.
The first week of Febuary I finally signed a contract for my first car. Only a few days later the manager calls me into his office for a chat. Up to this point he was friendly enough and left me to my devices, without any comment nor feedback on my performance.
He took out a piece of paper with a list of mistakes i had apparently been making then spent the next 10-15 minutes screaming at me, calling me incompetent, lazy, and that I had a “bad attitude” towards the job (that one stung the most, as like I said, I'd been staying late to finish tasks and tried helping others with tasks). And he even had the gall to berate me for working with other accountants to learn their tasks for my work on the manual?! Like… what?
He didn't give me a chance to speak, and essentially treated me like a high school head teacher berating a naughty student. This really took me by surprise as everything seemed to be going well and I thought everybody was happy for me to be there. Some staff even appreciated my enthusiasm to learn more. This guy however, saw me making mistakes and instead of pointing them out or correcting me, he assumed I knew what I was doing and just didn't care. He really assumed the complete opposite about my character.
I will happily admit I was making mistakes, but I honestly wasn't aware of many of them. Some weren't even bad just different methods of organising tasks that this control freak didn't like.
He finished this “meeting” by threatening to fire me if I “didn't pickup the slack” by March. In my head I immediately started panicking about how I was going to pay for my car.
After this he watched me like a hawk and occasionally made snarky comments about the littlest of things. Right down to my handwriting (which has never been great) or how I organised my desk. It got so bad that I would wake up some days and feel sick with the knowledge of going in to work.
What do you guys think I did to deal with this? Well I pulled myself up by my bootstraps and just “worked better / harder”.
I'm joking, of course. I started looking for a new job. I stopped speaking to other people, I stopped writing the manual, I left the file system to back up to shit again (nobody else cared to ask how I set it up and could be bothered to learn how to use it), left at 5pm on the dot regardless if I've finished a task or not and I have since lost any and all interest in a career in finance.
I resorted to the bare minimum and decided if he was going to talk to me like that after a month, what's he going to be like after 6? I HAD TO GET OUT!!!
When COVID hit the UK in March I was sent home onfurlough, found another job in the NHS as I wanted to help with the pandemic and felt a huge sense of relief wash over me. A few months later that shitty job let me go. Just as well I moved into the medical field, a path I never would have predicted.
I currently work for emergency services on the phones and recently went back there for a reference for the first time since 2020. I suddenly felt an anxiety attack coming on as I pulled into the car park.
Thankfully I was able to do without the reference, but it only then dawned on me that, despite my current role dealing with emergencies, I have felt much calmer, more confident and sure of myself and colleagues here than I ever did in that DIY shop.
Just let that sink in: I feel more relaxed and at ease dealing with emergency calls than I did processing a few invoices. If that's not a purely toxic workplace, I don't know what is.
Rant over. Have any of you had a similar experience where a boss has bullied you out of a job?