I came into a company a little over a year ago with a mandate to revitalize their e-commerce and and digital marketing completely because the existing marketing department could not do anything digital profitably.
I did a great job despite constant resistance from my peers and boss who were all threatened by me and unwilling to accept that there was a new manager on the team. My position was forced on them by top management.
There was conflict all the time and everything was an uphill battle. My boss was an emotional basket case who had the whole department completely stressed out to the point of being physically ill.
One time I was pushing the department to meet a deadline related to some important changes to our service offering, getting that reflected on our website. My CEO heard I was making a big deal about the website being accurate.
The CEO took that and joked in two group meetings that I must have been abused as a child to be concerned failing to do my job would reflect poorly on me.
I accused the CEO of creating a hostile work environment. Everyone else in the meetings took the CEOs side and said they did not hear that comment, despite that laughs it got. I let HR know it was not funny or acceptable, I was shocked at the level crude humor from the top, and btw I was sexually assaulted as a child.
While that situation was defused because I dropped it, they likely decided to fire me then last summer, but had to wait long enough to avoid any connection to my accusations of harassment.
Recently I got formally written up for something minor, which was really weird. Then last week I upset a contact at an agency that reported to me, by saying she was being unprofessional in her lame response to me calling them out on completely blowing a project. So I upset some agency we just started working with.
The next day my boss used it as an excuse to finally put this shitty year to and end and fired me.
The only reason I never quit was I would not get unemployment. I had been looking for other jobs.
While it was a blow to my ego and shocking to be fired from a job, and hurts my financial situation – I feel massively relieved to be out of an unsupportive, shady, toxic company.
I also feel good about giving them a lot of shit throughout my year there for preventing me from being effective, their inflexibility, the toxic vibes and taking harassment / hostile work environment comments from the CEO to HR.
While the CEO got a pass on that, I know they lawyered up and we’re seriously threatened. There was a long gap between my accusations and when we finally all met to come to a resolution. The Chairman said “So where do we stand?” while the normally cocky ceo looked like he was about to have a panic attack. He got a reality check and it hurt him.
I said “I consider the issue closed” just to keep getting a paycheck. I went on to massively increase their online revenue but they fired me over nothing months later.
If work fucks with you, be honest with them and don’t let yourself get dicked around. I feel better getting fired than dealing with that constant discomfort.